Soldat on ESL

[balian]

Hello guys!

As a casual but enthusiast player of Soldat for so many years, it recently came to my mind how awesome it would be to have Soldat back on ESL!

ESL is the world's largest esports company, where thousands of players gather to play their favourite games on a competitive level.
http://play.eslgaming.com/global

I would love to see Soldat included, so I came to ask you how you would feel about it! Please answer the poll and leave a comment with your suggestions!

Cheers!

[CCalp]

Hey balian,

thank you for your post.
I agree with you: ESL is the right place for Soldat. We had some great times there in the past.

I do see certain problems, though:
1) Activity: As you might know the Soldat community isn't very active at the moment. Thus we have to assume that there wouldn't be much activity in ESL either - at least at the beginning. That's why you should think about which kind of tournaments/leagues you would like to start in ESL. A 3on3 CTF league, for instance, would most likely fail due to a lack of activity. There are other possible competitive forms: 2on2 TDM / CTF, 1on1 DM, etc. Would you want to start (a) cup(s) or rather a permanent league? It's not only about the form which most players would prefer - it should also be a reasonable counterpart to the still existing SCTFL. It should not aim to replace that IMHO.
2) Administration: Second, you would not only need enough players to take part in the ESL tournaments but also a few guys willing to do administrative tasks, i.e. "admins". I would offer myself for that job, however, we would need at least 2 or 3 guys in order to have a proper team. Depending on activity of the league, you would have to spend quite an amount of time to organize and administrate events.
3) Application: I don't know the criteria for applying a new game to ESL. Who can do it, and how?


So for the case you really want to start something there, I encourage you to think about these issues thoroughly if you don't want to create yet another project which will be dead before it has properly started. I will be willing to help if you want. If you want to talk you can find me in IRC, too.

I wonder what the other guys around here think about your idea. I do like it!

Best regards
Calp

[balian]

Hi CCalp,

I strongly agree with you that choosing the right game formats is very important to captivate players for the tournaments!
So 2on2 TDM /CTF and 1on1 DM seems good options to you?
I believe for starters, regular tournaments would be the best option, and depending on the player base we could add a ladder.

About administration, ESL would deal with it and I'm sure admin applications would be open for you or anyone interested.

My main concerns are a regular player base playing in the cups. I think that at least 20 regulars would make ESL interested.
Hoping the word spreads and we have more people joining!

[CCalp]

So 2on2 TDM /CTF and 1on1 DM seems good options to you?

I didn't mean to say that, however, TO ME these are good options, yes. My favourite format is 3on3 CTF definitely, but as I said this might not be a good idea due to possible correlations with SCTFL. I am pretty sure my opinion does not represent the majority's opinion, thus we will have to gather more ideas and suggestions first.

My main concerns are a regular player base playing in the cups. I think that at least 20 regulars would make ESL interested.
Hoping the word spreads and we have more people joining!

You are right. I wonder in which way we should proceed with.. I do think it's a very good idea to gather some opinions from the community, however, I would not make the whole project dependent on those. If you really want to make this happen you should 1) realize that you will have to put some effort in that 2) gather a few responsible persons who want to help seriously 3) start the project (maybe beginning with a cup first) 4) advertise for the project (e.g. here, in SCTFL forums, on IRC). Then you will be able to estimate the worthiness of the idea.
The downside of this plan is clear: Once you know whether the project is/will be successful, you already have spend quite some time on it. So if it fails, the work was in vain. My concern is, however, that if you just ask in the forum who would like to take part in ESL cups/ladders you will get many false responds: either a lot of people saying yes who won't be active in ESL eventually, or hardly any responses even though there would be quite a few participants once the ESL thingy is running.

[%%%%%%%]

I'd play, and if it's popular with the players, I don't see why SCTFL couldn't merge into/become part of Soldat's ESL.

[Petterkowski]

Soldat was few times in ESL before years and years ago and every time died due to inactivity even during Soldat's peak. SCTFL also tried to merge into ESL once but it turned out to be a disaster and the season was basically lost. A huge group of players split, many of them even left the game due to the lack of interest. Most of them prefered to stay in the place where they grew up - the forum of sctfl. That's why SCTFL as a body never tried to do it again because it actually did do more harm than good. People didn't want to come to the new platform and were too lazy to make their ESL team and get their members on it, many problems with other procedures too. ESL is a really great system that practically runs itself and i'd love to see Soldat there because it's kind of an opportunity to get potential player base, but it doesn't work for Soldat. There were many attempts to organise something like a quick cup in ESL too but every single time it all boiled down to the fact that people didn't like Soldat in ESL. It didn't work out then, and im afraid it will not work out now, no matter what you do. GL anyways!

[CCalp]

What about the old 1on1 DM and 2on2 TDM ladders, Petter? They actually were pretty active for a longer period of time.

[duz]

After 1.7 and the dev team aiming something "big" for the game, why not? But today I would say NO.

[CheeSeMan.]

Just to give you some insight on the ESL system from past experience, I helped administrate the last attempt of putting Soldat on ESL & their system is a colossal pain to use. ESL stuck some Admin guy over me who was a nice guy but knew nothing about Soldat, he kept trying to start cups with rules that just had no place in Soldat. And I unfortunately just did not have the time to wade through ESL settings & configs to get something running that worked, yes you will need quite a bit of freetime(atleast at the start) to get things set up. This was probably nearly 2 years ago so maybe their system has become more user friendly for the admin side but I doubt it.

I think the only times it ran well in the past was when there was a whole team who were very familiar with the ESL system but also played Soldat so knew how our gamemodes & formats ran(This was years ago).

Though as Duz points out after 1.7 might as well try, even it fails might help bring back a couple of players!