Meeting place for competing teams
scones
Join Date: 2012-11-12 Member: 169867Members
Join Date: 2012-11-12 Member: 169867Members
Hello NS2 fans!
I am sorta new to the NS2 community, but have had the game since it came out.
I am wondering, is there a place where casual teams can meet and arrange matches? i know about ENSL and ESL of course, and players probably arrange matches in here too, but i can't seem to find a place, where teams/clans are able to arrange matches, without competing in official leagues like on ENSL.
The thing is: NS2 is a really teambased game, and fooling around on FFA servers really gets old, due to the lack of communication and teamwork. Which is why, me and some other players are starting up a clan, but we're not really into all the serious competitive stuff (yet), and teaming up on an FFA server doesn't really work well, due to teambalance etc.
We're simply requesting a place where we would be able to meet and have dialogues with other teams, about arranging clan wars etc.
This place could be as simple as a forum, specifically for arranging matches between teams. If there is no such place, i would be willing to get that up and running, if people in here think that it's a good idea.
Please let me know what you think
Thank you
Scones
I am sorta new to the NS2 community, but have had the game since it came out.
I am wondering, is there a place where casual teams can meet and arrange matches? i know about ENSL and ESL of course, and players probably arrange matches in here too, but i can't seem to find a place, where teams/clans are able to arrange matches, without competing in official leagues like on ENSL.
The thing is: NS2 is a really teambased game, and fooling around on FFA servers really gets old, due to the lack of communication and teamwork. Which is why, me and some other players are starting up a clan, but we're not really into all the serious competitive stuff (yet), and teaming up on an FFA server doesn't really work well, due to teambalance etc.
We're simply requesting a place where we would be able to meet and have dialogues with other teams, about arranging clan wars etc.
This place could be as simple as a forum, specifically for arranging matches between teams. If there is no such place, i would be willing to get that up and running, if people in here think that it's a good idea.
Please let me know what you think
Thank you
Scones
Comments
If it's just you and maybe a few friends check out ENSL.org gathers. You basically show up and wait for enough people to play and you pick teams and play.
Reddit mumble also is a place you hang out and wait for enough people to be around to play. IP is - 74.86.55.132 port: 64738
so it would be great if they would have an easy way to make there first steps into the pcws with good games.
Some ideas:
orangise a steam group for new teams (maybe only 2 captains/organisers per team should join).
ask around which are good beginner teams to face first and ask there teamleaders to join.
look for the lower ensl divison teams you will see after the first games that skill is indeed important but
trained teamplay>>skill (unless the diffrence in skill is big)
i know getting into ensl seems first harsh but i think its the best way to get into contact with competing teams,
when they have finaly there ladder system in place on the ensl website it might even be better for new teams (eta unknowen)
/offtopic/
in the past of ensl (Season 1 and 2 and ns1 days) Teamcaptains where asking for pcws in an irc channel where most other captain and some players where connected.
that stopped completly idk why and now all is happening with steam what is a lot more work cause everyone has to add most other captains to the steam friendlist and then ask everyone seperated instead of type into the irc chat channel: "searching pcw low" and everyone sees it direcltiy
//offtopic end//
Some sort of pcw/scrim page would really be cool if you ask me. It also takes a ridiculous amount of time to find games sometimes and you need to sit at your screen for hours to contact people.
What i imagine is a page where you can't post anything else than "looking 4 game" and you choose time and date and how long the post should be alive. That way you can post 2h before you want to play a post that will stay for say 2h, or if you know you can play say next wednesday you put one for that and make it disappear after that wednesday. And teams could just check the page, see who's looking 4 action tonite, or this week and click it and send a message. This would of course require some sort of registration from atleast the team captain. Oh and then you put in some sort of skill lvl like oldschool irc style. "pcw 20cet skill mid [clan name]"
If you really wanna make it cool you could add a function for casters to click the same post, add himself as a caster and then when the schedule is accepted you get a separate list of "games goin' down today" and even unregistered guys can then check out streams when they're bored or not playing.
Maybe this could be implemented by someone to the ensl page, a separate pcw/scrim section.
And of course i don't know what uwe has in store for their upcoming matchmaking system, sabot or whatever it was called.
But this pcw/scrim organizing i feel is an issue, new teams have hard times finding games and "old" teams like us only play mainly the same guys over and over again due to the friends list and generally it being a tedious task adding friends and catching them online etc etc.
People need practice for the ensl games and new teams need to get the hang of things before participating in ensl. And i guess some teams play for fun only. Gathers are not the same as trying your best with your own team
I can only throw some ideas out there, I have no coding skillzz...
Maybe there's some scheduling apps or pages where you could draw inspiration from? Doodle comes to mind but thats not really what we need for ns2, but you get the idea.
That pretty much sums up the idea i had ^^
I think that this might be what we need, until they launch Organised Play Systems. http://unknownworlds.com/ns2/organised-play-systems/ and since we dont know when that will come out, this idea could work for a really long time.
Thought i would quote another post on this forum, because it is relevant to this
If you're NA, a good portion of the NA community is active on this community mumble. A lot of teams use it as their team mumble as well. Teams do "scrims" or "Practice Clan Wars (PCW's)" daily against other teams. It's all about finding those other team contacts to arrange them with. Currently the best and most reliable way is to steam friend it. If the only teams available to scrim are way too experienced for it to be any fun or constructive for you, try suggesting splitting the teams 3 from each and doing a mix. Or if there are people waiting to start a PUG, ask if they want to make a mix to play you.
totaly agreeing with you
Lets face the possibility to improve:
1 possibility:
lets all join the steamgroup and replace the steam start-shortcut and steamautostart with the link to the steamgroupchat.
that shortcut looks then like: "steam://friends/joinchat/103582791432157584"
if you start steam then with that link you automatical join the groupchat of the steamgroup
(what is from the steamgroup: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/ns2scrimnet what is sadly dead
2 possibility:
an other possibility would be some kind of php script stuff what i first have to google brb on that
3 possilbility:
but the best option would be an if an matchsearching function could be integrated to the ensl.org website
what should be in the new ensl.org website what we are waiting allready for nearly over 1 year
because of the best possiblity not showing up and the 1st possibility not working the past shows it might be best to work on the 2nd possiblity and integrate it somehow with an link to the ensl.org website
(the ensl website is anyway not rly informative for new teams)
hope that helps
EDIT: Here's my list as an example.
EDIT2: I really wish people would still use IRC though. Thing is flawless!
How do you know it's coming soon?
means to me wait 2 more months at least until it works properly
lets get something started its better to have alternatives or show them an example of how it could be
instad of sit back and wait all day.
i bet the effort that can be saved in searching matches all day =is the same amout of work then= setting 1 system up properly
for me the steamgroupchat seems the best if people are too lazy to use irc and ensl.org to slow to get something in place.....
This doesn't eliminate the fact that you have to ask each and everyone separately for a pcw, wait for them to answer or get a "i'll get back to you in 30". Suddenly you sit there with 6 separate windows open, multitasking for 30min until you finally get a pcw or not.
on irc you'd just post one line, maybe do a bump after 15min if no-one replied or new guys joined in (who usually join in order to look for game or post themselves) and you'd get a pm and get things going. No need to babysit. Im not 16 anymore i haven't got time to sit gaming and chatting all night
Irc was great, used it for DoD back in the days. Also it was great for having your own private channel for the team, you'd talk trash and discuss and you were able to have a topic for all the games when and where and who's able to play and keep track of things in general. But since nothing goes on in irc anymore our team also has moved to using friggin' facebook (omg) and just idling on mumble all evening. (we are having a holiday break right now though).
I'm kind of guessing that "sabot" will be a matchmaking tool that only works at that instant when you got a few players and press look 4 game and it matches you with similar skilled guys and gets a 12man game going. This isn't really scheduling, as in "looking for game at 21cet" or "next wednesday @ 20cet skill low". This is something i think the comp needs with the scene being relatively small and you can't get evenly matched opponents at any time of day any day of the week. You have to plan games in advance for both to get 6 players at a certain time, the scene being also very mature and not everyone playing from afternoon to late night in one sitting every day.
And will "sabot" somehow integrate with NSL or whatnot, where scheduling is mighty important?
I'm just sad to see that we're stuck with steam chat. Yes it works, yes you can divide into groups etc to make things easier, but it just isn't as simple and effective as irc was. Maybe a "let's rush back to irc" thread in the comp section is in order? At least until sabot comes and saves the day?
***the examples i give here are only from my own experiences, maybe others have had a easier time with steam chat and getting pcw's.. And yes sometimes it goes smoothly, not raging here. But it's far from a good system if you ask me.
So you're suggesting that we try and do this thing until the matchmaking system releases?
I must agree somewhat. I find it hard to believe that a matchmaking system for a game with a player pool of like 1k, will be able to find a 6man team a game against another 6man team very quickly, if they were to join the queue on a normal day. That is unless the system would match a 6man premade team against a 6man team with solo queuers, but i doubt that, and that would sorta suck. People who play on teams will have to find specific days with high activity in order to find a match.
However, i think a system like this would severely increase game population, which will probably increase the player pool a lot.
I still vote for reviving the irc channels and the activity there in general for easier search for pcw's and scheduling league games. Or a page that does the same but looks nicer if people really are put off by the dated look of irc. Admins, refs, casters, teamcaptains and fans should have one easy place to communicate.
Maybe irc is not easily accessible from a newcomers perspective these days i suspect, "console generation" and all that, so maybe a clear page with all the right functions would be better. ENSL would be the right place, but it's already ridiculously hard to navigate the way it is now so the whole page would need a redo.
I found this piece of treasure but it hurts my now tired head to figure it out
Exactly my thoughts. IRC may be great, but it's too old and complicated for newcomers, and i doubt that most people can be arsed to even download it. IRC is not a common PC program anymore. You dont see it on ninite or anything
I like the idea of getting something out there, that is attractive and easily accessible for both veterans and casuals, where people can easily plan matches with other teams. Something plain and simple, but yes, also with all the right functions
Everything is too complicated for the modern casual gamer. IRC is not as user friendly as steam for instance, and a lot of people will not be bothered with something that they have to use more than 20 seconds to figure out. It's not so much the complexity of the program, but more the fact that people have to actually take proper initial and download it, unlike steam or a web forum. A lot of casual gamers dont even know what IRC is, and that scares a lot of people away, since they would much rather stay with something they know and feel comfortable with.
Dont get me wrong. Bringing back the IRC is a good idea, but i think there is a reason why it suddenly died out
I think that would be the best and most viable solution.
If every team would regular enter the times they can and want to have matches, finding a match should be pretty easy, implementation-wise.
Just my guess, I have know no Idea in what/with what the ensl page is realized.
Also you have to find someone to implemented it, without knowing if it will be used.
Its pretty annoying. I started just recently to organize pcws for my team. First you have to wait for every member of your own team to get back to you, which time and day works, tell that to the other team and wait again. If the other team wants to play an hour later, the hole fun starts anew.