saamdrshdwpuppetWhat problem are you solving that isn't solved by esea or ugc? This is not a big market and player base dilution is a real concern, especially when we need to keep esea numbers high.
What does your technology stack look like? How are you allocating or controlling servers? Automatic statistics and demos? Stv relays? How are you paying for this stack?
Being a league admin is hard work. Running an entire league is a full time job and even smart people make bad decisions if they aren't experienced (we've had a few tournaments ran like that in the community). The math for league matchups and tie breaking is not hard, but doing it wrong is really prevalent. What admin experience do you have? What does your admin team look like? How much experience do they have? How will you rank teams and decide tie breakers? (You should see my ELO spreadsheets from 4 years of TWL admin)
These are some intro level basic questions that if you can't answer now, you need to before anyone can take your project seriously. I'm not against a new league by default but merely having an idea and throwing some WordPress plugins and rented tragicservers instances into a blender isn't enough.
Replacing UGC with this if it's even half decent would be amazing. UGC gets players because it's free but aside from that it's terrible.
- One match a week with terrible scheduling system (if you can't play every wednesday at 9:30 you're basically fucked, also 9:30 is a pretty shitty start time)
- Terrible maplist with new maps thrown in for no good reason (koth_forge was played this season)
- Awful servers (provided by gameservers.com with prime locations like Miami, Florida. Servers also only support sizzling stats)
- One of the worst head admins basically ever.
- Big problems with sandbagging/ teams just playing whatever div they want (i,e brand new teams in the highest division)
A service that fixes these issues and caters to new players would be a godsend. Also, the idea being pushed that brand new players should be playing their first season in Open isn't reasonable, very few people can handle going 0-16 and barely coming close to winning rounds all season and losing money to do so.
Basically that. Sandbagging in UGC is why I called it a meme league in my original post. Don't get me wrong, UGC is a great starting place, but at the same time, it's kinda the only starting place available in North America. I don't like what they're doing, and it feels sort of like they're more or less just running a league with zero passion behind it. Like they're robots or something.
No disrespect for any of their administrators, of course. But I feel like their entire league is just disconnected, even amongst themselves. Some of their admins don't have a clue on what the other admins are doing. Hell, when the OW league first came out, not even the head admin of UGC knew what the scheduling was. I mean, what? How does that even happen?
I'm not sure if TFCL will have multiple matches per week, as like I said, I'm not trying to replace (or clone) ESEA. But the scheduling will definitely be far more lenient. If you can't make a game on Wednesday, schedule one for Thursday instead. If both team leaders agree to it, it's done. That's when you play. This exact system isn't finished yet, but it will definitely be ready in time for the public spring beta. As for whether or not we'll have a server network by then? Well, not sure yet, but we should have at least a dozen or so servers available for teams to reserve. It's really just about scaling it right. Teams will always have the option of playing on their own server, instead of one of ours. Though eventually, I'm hoping to have enough servers to properly handle every match, from every division and tournament. That's the goal, but it will take a while to reach it.
Saam, if you're interested in talking with me in private, I'd love to go over some of the things you'd like to see in TFCL. I'd also love your feedback on some of the more wacky ideas I'm hoping to include in TFCL, but haven't really greenlit them yet due to... well, obvious reasons that you'll find out if we chat. :p