The first season of GSL 2016 is finally complete, and thus so is our Writers' Draft. Much like the Grand Final, it all came down to a straight shootout between Destructicon and Soularion. The final standings are listed below, with squad breakdowns by draft position.
While I (and the four contestants) enjoyed writing and updating the standings, that may have been because it's something new that we haven't attempted before. I'd rather leave it here than get diminishing returns every time we repeat this.
If we do repeat this for Season 2 though, we're already thinking of changes we can make to the formula. While it's great that we collectively picked the two finalists as our first two picks (conveniently ignoring the other 30 for now...), it's also a bit galling that with such a top heavy points distribution, the standings were effectively decided by the order writers picked in.
One suggestion mooted was to allow a 'ban' phase to hopefully reduce the predictable top end scorers, but that would also go against my idea of this being a 'true' Power Rank, ranking everyone strictly by how likely they are to progress while taking into account the bracket. If you have any suggestions, please let us know.
On that note, please let us know if you have any comments about our coverage at all, whether that's our Proleague / GSL / SSL / WCS previews and recaps. We're in the process of rejigging our content (hopefully changes will be here soon™), and it would be nice to know what you like / dislike. For example, we're not big fans of strict recaps, but would you like something akin to the Proleague Weekly Wrapup that we write for the starleagues in future? How much of our stuff do you actually read? Comments and feedback are highly appreciated.
Best and main interests are when the player confrontation are described with technical analysis. The GSL season 1 by the way was a nice reading coverage. Preview is the most interesting. I'm not sure recap is very accurate and I think it's required too much work for being really valuable. Thanks for the great work.
I found it quite interesting to follow the developping story. If I may suggest : you should not have such a big gap between the top 2 and say the top 8 or 16. Imo I feel it would be more entertaining if writers were rewarded with picking a lot of lower class players that surprise everyone by making it to the ro8 (or ro16) : e.g .losira, rather than just rushing to pick the top tier players.
You should totally continue though because I love to disagree with all of your choices and predictions.
B-b-but I love recaps. Although I understand it might be too much work. But maybe we can have recaps for the semis and the finals?
I enjoyed the writers drafts. The only thing I think is weak about it is that it's defined at the start of the season and then nothing changes. It's too static so you can skip the weekly updates and just check the final result when the season ends. That's just like playing FPL without trading... not much hype imo. If you could manage to introduce some dynamics that would be awesome (sadly I have no ideas to contribute).
One thing I'd like to add is that the preview could be released a bit earlier. Usually when I go to sleep the preview is not up yet and the matches happen at 6am, so I have no time to read the preview before watching the matches, which takes away most of the hype. Again I know you guys do all this ad honorem so I thank you very much that we have this content at all
On May 03 2016 06:09 Hurricaned wrote: I found it quite interesting to follow the developping story. If I may suggest : you should not have such a big gap between the top 2 and say the top 8 or 16. Imo I feel it would be more entertaining if writers were rewarded with picking a lot of lower class players that surprise everyone by making it to the ro8 (or ro16) : e.g .losira, rather than just rushing to pick the top tier players.
You should totally continue though because I love to disagree with all of your choices and predictions.
The funny thing is that I had already toned down the scoring at the top end (Originally it was something like 80 for champion, 50 for winning in ro4 and so on). If we do it again, it's definitely something we'll change up
On May 03 2016 06:14 Silvana wrote: B-b-but I love recaps. Although I understand it might be too much work. But maybe we can have recaps for the semis and the finals?
I enjoyed the writers drafts. The only thing I think is weak about it is that it's defined at the start of the season and then nothing changes. It's too static so you can skip the weekly updates and just check the final result when the season ends. That's just like playing FPL without trading... not much hype imo. If you could manage to introduce some dynamics that would be awesome (sadly I have no ideas to contribute).
One thing I'd like to add is that the preview could be released a bit earlier. Usually when I go to sleep the preview is not up yet and the matches happen at 6am, so I have no time to read the preview before watching the matches, which takes away most of the hype. Again I know you guys do all this ad honorem so I thank you very much that we have this content at all
Recaps: To be honest, I don't think anyone on staff likes writing strict game-by-game recaps. We're now in a time where we've got pretty much instant access to vods, so there's no incentive to read a recap rather than watching it yourself—if you want recommendations, the LR polls are always there. Storyline recaps are something different though, and we (mainly stu I guess) will keep doing those if there's something interesting to write about. The proleague weekly ones are things I particular enjoy right now just because I can talk about whatever I want, rather than strictly what happened in g1, g2, g3 etc
Draft trading: This is something I considered, but didn't have enough time to make work initially. I'm still thinking of ways to vary things over the season
edit: Also, hopefully the new system will mean that previews might be out a little sooner. NO PROMISES
Personally I found this unabated e-peen wanking, but it seems the majority want it to continue so my only suggestion would be to open it up to more people in that case.
I love reading both the previews and the recaps. I consider myself very much a casual player/viewer and so the previews always generate hype for me whilst I find the recaps to be informative. Even brief summations can give me new ideas to try and adopt in my play and then I have a VOD to access as well for reference. So yeah, win win from me
While I understand that writing recaps might be too much work, I loved reading them before. Maybe just make round recaps for the starleagues? For instance, after the ro. 32 is finished write a short recap of the most notable things that happened? Maybe that would make the storyline recaps a bit easier to make and follow, since then we would follow through the entire season? I don't know, It's just something I would love to read. The writeups this season were amazing, but I found myself enjoying the proleague ones a bit more, because the "Five conclusion" would fill me in if I had missed a week (which tends to happen) and provide me with more context.
Your content is really great and I am (and we probably all are) extremely thankful to have this amazing site!
I enjoy reading the preview and I pretty much read everything there. I consider a day without any preview is a boring day (I just really like to read)
maybe some storyline recap like in SPL would be nice, it help casual fans to understand the storyline/players better I think.
Also funny preview like the one you guys do for ByuN at the beginning of the SSL season was really enjoyable, too. Maybe if we can get funny preview a little bit more often that would be awesome.
I enjoy reading everything you guys write, to build up the hype and the make the waiting time in the bus a bit sweeter. Imo you were doing a fine job this season, most of all the PL Previews. I like to have every game written about in detail, to see if my specutaltions and bets are shared with others too.
For the draft, i would suggest that the pick order has to be desided by a Round Robin Group Play in sc2! Only way to make it fair.
On May 03 2016 16:24 TheOneAboveU wrote: Shoutout to my team for some great surprises... and also for the not so great surprises. (what the hell, Classic?)
G O T R E K T / 10
Get outta here or prepare to get wrecked even harder in round 2, ya scrub :^)
It would be nice if the writers draft continued but were simplified. As it stood, I had difficulty figuring out what the numbers meant. Perhaps the information could be presented in a new format, such as with charts or graphs?
For the next draft, why doesn't each staff member select 4 TL users each and assemble a Team where the staff member is the captain. Each TL user selects one player for the draft and the staff member selects their ace player which would be worth double points. This will expand interactivity and brag rights ten fold!
On May 05 2016 06:47 BisuDagger wrote: For the next draft, why doesn't each staff member select 4 TL users each and assemble a Team where the staff member is the captain. Each TL user selects one player for the draft and the staff member selects their ace player which would be worth double points. This will expand interactivity and brag rights ten fold!
I agree with BD. The way it is right now, there's just not much incentive for people outside to participate or follow.
On May 05 2016 06:47 BisuDagger wrote: For the next draft, why doesn't each staff member select 4 TL users each and assemble a Team where the staff member is the captain. Each TL user selects one player for the draft and the staff member selects their ace player which would be worth double points. This will expand interactivity and brag rights ten fold!
I agree with BD. The way it is right now, there's just not much incentive for people outside to participate or follow.
Excellent idea BisuDagger! Right now it's basically us plebeians listening to your royal tales from the inner Kingdom. While we've all been out tilling the fields.
On May 05 2016 06:47 BisuDagger wrote: For the next draft, why doesn't each staff member select 4 TL users each and assemble a Team where the staff member is the captain. Each TL user selects one player for the draft and the staff member selects their ace player which would be worth double points. This will expand interactivity and brag rights ten fold!
I agree with BD. The way it is right now, there's just not much incentive for people outside to participate or follow.
Excellent idea BisuDagger! Right now it's basically us plebeians listening to your royal tales from the inner Kingdom. While we've all been out tilling the fields.
That analogy doesn't quite work, because I'm the one doing everything while you all sit around reading things occasionally
I'll think about ways to increase participation. Last time round, we sorted things out literally 24 hours before the first round of 32 group; this time, we have more time to think about how to improve things.
On May 05 2016 06:47 BisuDagger wrote: For the next draft, why doesn't each staff member select 4 TL users each and assemble a Team where the staff member is the captain. Each TL user selects one player for the draft and the staff member selects their ace player which would be worth double points. This will expand interactivity and brag rights ten fold!
I agree with BD. The way it is right now, there's just not much incentive for people outside to participate or follow.
Excellent idea BisuDagger! Right now it's basically us plebeians listening to your royal tales from the inner Kingdom. While we've all been out tilling the fields.
That analogy doesn't quite work, because I'm the one doing everything while you all sit around reading things occasionally
I'll think about ways to increase participation. Last time round, we sorted things out literally 24 hours before the first round of 32 group; this time, we have more time to think about how to improve things.
One thing I would suggest is adding in more staff members as well. Watching 4 people duke it out is not really entertaining. "Oh, it's already the semis? Cool..."