Season 4 Begins & New Rules

Many of us wondered what would happen to NS2 competitive play after Season 3 and the World Championships. Many may have thought that the Cologne live event may have been our swan song or the last hurrah. We're here to tell you that NS2 is alive and we're continuing to bring you as many matches as last season. The season starts this weekend with matches already posted in their respective divisions. Please contact your opponents to schedule.

In an effort to bring clarity and a smoother running league, there was a huge push to redraft the rules of the league. While many of the aspects and qualities that we strive for stayed the same. Some things did not. The major changes were the number of mercs allowed, the pause function being used this season, and the scheduling of matches. The last being most applicable now.

There will be no clean up week this season. No saving matches until the end of the season to be played. Matches will be played on a weekly basis. Teams will have 10 days (or the course of 2 weekends) to play their match from the posted date on the website. This week, Week 1, will be the exception because the schedule was posted a few days later than I wanted. Week 1 matches will have until April 6th to be completed. That should give teams from every division and experience level enough time to schedule their matches. The following weeks will adhere to the 10 day rule.

Just as you had voice in the seedings, you have voice to shape the rules also. Please take a look and give your thoughts. For an easier read, you can go to my own Google Doc of the rules or follow the link below to the NSL website link.

NSL League Rules

Casters and referees, please check your respective subforums for sign ups!

Zefram on 17 March 14 12:30

Comments

4962

Blank joshhhy | Barrel O' Monkey's

Rules look good to me. I'm excited to get this season underway!

17 March 2014, 13:44

774

Blank Arj | Ant

Smaragor is gonna comment real soon not understanding there is no standard time.

17 March 2014, 16:10

4666

Blank SUPER_SARS

6am saturday morning? Where are you even getting that time Arj?

17 March 2014, 16:21

Noavatar

Blank Smaragor

(b) Scheduling a Match
(i) There are no default times for matches.
i demand arj gets banned for this season for not reading the rules

17 March 2014, 16:24

4353

Blank malga | iMAGINE

No demo recording required I guess?

17 March 2014, 18:18

5291

Blank Pelargir | We're grumpy

No demo recording required indeed Malga.

17 March 2014, 18:26

Noavatar

Blank Decoy

Looks great. Well done, Zef!

17 March 2014, 18:57

4666

Blank SUPER_SARS

If you have any complaints, please visit the complaint department/Pelargir.

17 March 2014, 20:46

Noavatar

Blank Jekt | Envy

eh, descent instead of eclipse. or even a custom like icarus.

17 March 2014, 22:48

3639

Blank Zefram

I may just throw out descent and put in ns2_caged. I don't really think people will care either way.

18 March 2014, 00:21

Noavatar

Blank Wob | B L I N K

Descent is a beautiful and really complicated map. Please keep it. It's probably the best map of them all, people just think it's summit with base rushing vents.

It's not. There's so much exciting game play you can do on it compared to summit.

If you want to remove a boring/bad map, remove biodome.

18 March 2014, 04:36

90

Blank Iots | el'pheer

how about instead of removing maps, add some.

18 March 2014, 07:22

86

Blank B1 | iMAGINE

There's not much fun in playing a corridor map. Descent on the other hand is great imo, not played enough. Only dislike those badly placed vents (mono/launch).

Let the games begin!

18 March 2014, 08:27

5527

Blank Littleevilwolf

what about the gorge tunnel in the vent rule is that gone?

18 March 2014, 09:26

5291

Blank Pelargir | We're grumpy

Gorge tunnel in a vent is still prohibited. Already a gorge in a ventilation can be painful ...

18 March 2014, 09:47

Noavatar

Blank Seb

Gorge tunnels in vents isn't even possible anymore?

18 March 2014, 10:02

4962

Blank joshhhy | Barrel O' Monkey's

It's not. Gorge tunnels are linked to nav mesh so you can't build one in a vent even if you want to.

Also, just in... iM; only team that enjoys Descent. gg

18 March 2014, 10:19

Noavatar

Blank Smaragor

knowing wob he probably doesnt enjoy it but just wants to play it cuz everybody else hates it

18 March 2014, 11:23

774

Blank Arj | Ant

When is docking going to be playable in comp?
And there used to be a map in early beta that was quite decent.. what was it called? (first map available I think)

18 March 2014, 14:17

2852

Blank Simba

Rockdown? lawl

18 March 2014, 14:22

2242

Blank herakles

(b) Female marine model and Shadow skinned aliens are permissible.
lol
and plz allow r_drawviewmodel 0 thx

18 March 2014, 16:25

Noavatar

Blank TheKarva | [karvalakki]

2 mercs in lower div you kiddin' right? .....right?

18 March 2014, 16:33

90

Blank Iots | el'pheer

this season we will have, summit 3 times, tram 2 times, veil 3 times, biodome 2 times, descent once, jambi once. (atleast for our team)

Can we please stop flooding the normal season with repeats of the same map all the time, give us caged, eclipse, fracture, anything..

18 March 2014, 20:13

Noavatar

Blank bumbasaur | Haamut

no demos, no 1st person spec.
who you gonna call?

19 March 2014, 00:06

Noavatar

Blank nezz | Envy

agreed herakles. Why can't we have invisible gun models!

19 March 2014, 01:44

3795

Blank maxamus | IG

Gorge Busters?

19 March 2014, 03:19

2129

Blank swalk | Xeon

Yeah, what happened to first person spectate? Really, really bad idea to remove that..
I agree on the vibe that maps are repeated too much, I'd like to play on different maps during the season. Instead of removing any maps, add some. There are some really good candidates out there. I also think the maps should be played equally much during the season, playing some maps more than others during the season adds to the biases people have for certain maps.
That makes people not care for the maps and refuse to play them in practice games.
Keep descent and maybe make people play it more than once during the season, then add some of the other good candidates so we don't have to play veil and summit again and again and again. I'd suggest adding caged and eclipse.

20 March 2014, 08:56

2781

Blank Mendasp | I'm disappointing

First person spec is disabled because it's bugged and makes the spectated person warp more or less depending on the difference between the spectated player ping and the spectator's ping.

On the other hand, the map distribution varies depending on team. Every team should be playing the same maps and every map should be played roughly the same amount of times... This uneven map distribution is something that has happened in the NS2WC qualifiers already that some teams played nothing but Jambi and Biodome.

Looking at my team, it seems we got this one:

Descent x2
Veil x3
Jambi x4
Biodome x3
Summit x2
Tram x2

20 March 2014, 09:53

2129

Blank swalk | Xeon

Referees stand no chance at all without both first person spectate and demorecording. One of them must be brought back imo.
I don't know why maps are not the same for every team, everyone should be playing the same maps in the same week imo. It seems so random and out of place the way it is now. I'd like to know if you used any form of system to place the maps or if you just randomly picked whatever you felt like. The latter is pretty bad.

20 March 2014, 10:26

4962

Blank joshhhy | Barrel O' Monkey's

Knowing Zefram, I would be willing to bet he had some system he made for assigning map rotations for each division.

Like Mendasp said, first person spec causes in-game issues that could affect engagements. The current NS2 demo system is absolutely terrible. Good luck identifying anything aside from blatant aim-botting from one of those. I would love to have some sort of anti-cheat safegaurds in the league, but at this point in time nothing is worth using.

20 March 2014, 11:10

3639

Blank Zefram

Every team (that has a match, some have byes) in the league is playing on the same maps every single week. From Premier through Division 4. Most divisions other than Premier and Div 1, and the divisions with only 5 teams, end on Week 7.

Week 1 tram marine top, summit
Week 2 descent, veil
Week 3 jambi, biodome
Week 4 biodome, summit
Week 5 jambi, descent
Week 6 tram marine bottom, veil
Week 7 summit, veil
Week 8 jambi, biodome
Week 9 veil, summit
Week 10 tram, jambi

20 March 2014, 11:33

5313

Blank Tinki | We're grumpy

I was just wondering, there is no rules about Vac Ban players ?

30 March 2014, 14:08

5616

Blank Jackson | Bad Gather Group

tl;dr

16 April 2014, 12:10

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