CSL presents Azubu Collegiate Champions - Page 9
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shindigs
United States4795 Posts
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LlamaNamedOsama
United States1900 Posts
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SupLilSon
Malaysia4123 Posts
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syncopate
United States70 Posts
The site is still broken/ugly/disorganized. | ||
JaYbOc
Australia97 Posts
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Polar_Nada
United States1548 Posts
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Qurmish
4 Posts
I wanted to bring to your attention some of the concerns that I and many of my teammates who participate in this league, have with the current format. 1) The timeline is not appropriate for a college league. For anyone that has not looked at the season schedule yet, the regular season will be only four weeks long. In most divisions this will mean a total of 6 matches in the regular season. The season itself (including the grand finals) will end in February, after a month long break between the semi-finals. The most enjoyable part of this league was that it stretched throughout the entire school year. We played matches that everyone got excited about, and were an extremely enjoyable distraction from schoolwork. This season will not offer that investment from everyone in our community in Starcraft throughout the entire year. During the CSL season, interest in Starcraft goes way up, and our participation in Starcraft based campus events is much higher than usual. With this format, we will have a very short burst of excitement, which will die off quickly. We are looking for other ways to keep this excitement up through other leagues and clan wars, but it is a shame that the CSL, which filled this role all of last year, will fall short. The best part about the previous format was that it ran at a relaxed schedule. People could put the time into practicing as their schedules permitted with school. Having two matches per week makes this a lot more difficult than it had been previously. It will be very demanding to practice for two matches, put in 3 hours of continuous play over the weekend, and maintain schoolwork. 2) Matches scheduled through winter break. This was such a bad idea---I can't even begin to understand why this was deemed acceptable. The vast majority of college students will travel over winter break, and many will travel out of the country to places without easy access to internet. Two of our best players will be travelling outside of the United States over the break and will be unable to play at all. Irrespective of that, you now force players to choose between spending time with their families and friends and practicing/playing in the playoffs. This is a terrible burden to place on people who have very limited time home, and will make many of them lose interest in the competition altogether. Nobody should have to choose between these two things. 3) The division system does not allow for competition between a variety of schools. As a consequence of only playing six regular season matches, there will not be any inter-division competition. I really enjoyed meeting and testing the mettle of other teams from other parts of the country during the second half of the season. Now, we will only get exposure to a very small number of schools and will not interact with the vast majority of other schools that compete in the CSL. 4) The complete overhaul of the website weeks before the season started. There have been so many problems with this website that have already been mentioned and are not worth repeating. I do not understand why, if a site redesign was necessary for coding reasons, this couldn't have happened months in advance of the season starting. The likelihood that everything will be functional and on the level of the previous site look very bleak now. If it was too much to manage to get a new site up and running and put the new league together, then why try to do both? 5) The misinformation that was given out just days before the season started. From the perspective of a community organizer and someone who was trying to increase interest in Starcraft, this misinformation made our lives a lot harder than they needed to be. We specifically tried to recruit players of lower skill levels and get them engaged, only to be shut down hard at the last minute. Xeris, you said that he hopes that this will be featured in upcoming seasons, which is great, but the part that I don't think you understand is that it was extremely frustrating that you laid out the season format months in advance, only to completely renege on all of those decisions literally at the last minute. At some point you just have to make a decision and stick with it instead of leading everyone around by the nose because it adversely affects the people that you have participating in your league. It is extremely bad practice to continue to put out incorrect information. I guess I want to know what other schools think. I can say when I read the changes I was immediately disappointed and was very surprised by the reaction from everyone else in the community. Obviously there were some trade-offs, and some of the new additions are very exciting. But, the additions came at the expense of the core elements of the league. Is everyone happy with the fact that the entire season will only be 6 matches, and that the vast majority of schools will only be able to participate for the month of November? I would want to know if these changes were 100% intentional, or a consequence of putting this deal together with Azubu at the last minute. It seems pretty objectively bad from the perspective of having an enjoyable league, which allows for participation from schools of all different skill levels. Participating in this league forged some tremendous friendships at our school, and we have all been very excited to participate. Honestly, I thought that last year's league format was nearly perfect, and the changes that were announced back in August (2 division system, 2 seasons per year) would have made the league even better. I can't really understand the logic behind many of the recent changes, and I know it is too late to change anything now. I am hoping by writing this that the CSL will reconsider all of the changes that they made this year, and return to the original format in the future. I also, maybe naively, hope that there will be some effort put into arranging some sort of league for after February, when the league finishes. What is the possibility of some sort of season 6.5 or Spring/Summer season happening to supplement the extremely truncated season 6? Thank you to Hazleynut, Xeris, and all of the folks at the Collegiate Starleague. I don't write this because I want to add unneeded negativity to the community, but because I think this league can be a lot better. Thanks, Benji Columbia University | ||
Martinni
Canada169 Posts
On October 30 2012 05:19 Qurmish wrote: I completely agree with everything the clm100 said in his post above, and apologize for the way my previous concerns were voiced on the CSL website, which contributed to a massive flamefest. I am extremely disappointed with many of the decisions that the CSL has made this season. I think it is great that there is a big name sponsor and there will be a live event---it sounds like a ton of fun and I can't wait to watch it; but, so many features that made the CSL such a great league were sacrificed to make this happen. This season's format does not make very much sense in the context of a college league. I only say this because of how much I have enjoyed participating in the CSL, and want the league to continue to improve in coming years. I believe that with this format there will be a dramatic decrease in participation from schools in the future. It is completely untenable and is antithetical to (what I thought) was the spirit of the league. I wanted to bring to your attention some of the concerns that I and many of my teammates who participate in this league, have with the current format. 1) The timeline is not appropriate for a college league. For anyone that has not looked at the season schedule yet, the regular season will be only four weeks long. In most divisions this will mean a total of 6 matches in the regular season. The season itself (including the grand finals) will end in February, after a month long break between the semi-finals. The most enjoyable part of this league was that it stretched throughout the entire school year. We played matches that everyone got excited about, and were an extremely enjoyable distraction from schoolwork. This season will not offer that investment from everyone in our community in Starcraft throughout the entire year. During the CSL season, interest in Starcraft goes way up, and our participation in Starcraft based campus events is much higher than usual. With this format, we will have a very short burst of excitement, which will die off quickly. We are looking for other ways to keep this excitement up through other leagues and clan wars, but it is a shame that the CSL, which filled this role all of last year, will fall short. The best part about the previous format was that it ran at a relaxed schedule. People could put the time into practicing as their schedules permitted with school. Having two matches per week makes this a lot more difficult than it had been previously. It will be very demanding to practice for two matches, put in 3 hours of continuous play over the weekend, and maintain schoolwork. 2) Matches scheduled through winter break. This was such a bad idea---I can't even begin to understand why this was deemed acceptable. The vast majority of college students will travel over winter break, and many will travel out of the country to places without easy access to internet. Two of our best players will be travelling outside of the United States over the break and will be unable to play at all. Irrespective of that, you now force players to choose between spending time with their families and friends and practicing/playing in the playoffs. This is a terrible burden to place on people who have very limited time home, and will make many of them lose interest in the competition altogether. Nobody should have to choose between these two things. 3) The division system does not allow for competition between a variety of schools. As a consequence of only playing six regular season matches, there will not be any inter-division competition. I really enjoyed meeting and testing the mettle of other teams from other parts of the country during the second half of the season. Now, we will only get exposure to a very small number of schools and will not interact with the vast majority of other schools that compete in the CSL. 4) The complete overhaul of the website weeks before the season started. There have been so many problems with this website that have already been mentioned and are not worth repeating. I do not understand why, if a site redesign was necessary for coding reasons, this couldn't have happened months in advance of the season starting. The likelihood that everything will be functional and on the level of the previous site look very bleak now. If it was too much to manage to get a new site up and running and put the new league together, then why try to do both? 5) The misinformation that was given out just days before the season started. From the perspective of a community organizer and someone who was trying to increase interest in Starcraft, this misinformation made our lives a lot harder than they needed to be. We specifically tried to recruit players of lower skill levels and get them engaged, only to be shut down hard at the last minute. Xeris, you said that he hopes that this will be featured in upcoming seasons, which is great, but the part that I don't think you understand is that it was extremely frustrating that you laid out the season format months in advance, only to completely renege on all of those decisions literally at the last minute. At some point you just have to make a decision and stick with it instead of leading everyone around by the nose because it adversely affects the people that you have participating in your league. It is extremely bad practice to continue to put out incorrect information. I guess I want to know what other schools think. I can say when I read the changes I was immediately disappointed and was very surprised by the reaction from everyone else in the community. Obviously there were some trade-offs, and some of the new additions are very exciting. But, the additions came at the expense of the core elements of the league. Is everyone happy with the fact that the entire season will only be 6 matches, and that the vast majority of schools will only be able to participate for the month of November? I would want to know if these changes were 100% intentional, or a consequence of putting this deal together with Azubu at the last minute. It seems pretty objectively bad from the perspective of having an enjoyable league, which allows for participation from schools of all different skill levels. Participating in this league forged some tremendous friendships at our school, and we have all been very excited to participate. Honestly, I thought that last year's league format was nearly perfect, and the changes that were announced back in August (2 division system, 2 seasons per year) would have made the league even better. I can't really understand the logic behind many of the recent changes, and I know it is too late to change anything now. I am hoping by writing this that the CSL will reconsider all of the changes that they made this year, and return to the original format in the future. I also, maybe naively, hope that there will be some effort put into arranging some sort of league for after February, when the league finishes. What is the possibility of some sort of season 6.5 or Spring/Summer season happening to supplement the extremely truncated season 6? Thank you to Hazleynut, Xeris, and all of the folks at the Collegiate Starleague. I don't write this because I want to add unneeded negativity to the community, but because I think this league can be a lot better. Thanks, Benji Columbia University You're right on every point.. they had something very nice going on last year and now so many changes without consulting the community before. This current season is just a disaster. I would also like to add the BO1 format they currently run isn't really suited for a starcraft league. You can't judge a player's strength by just one match. Having BO3 would add a very real mental aspect to it. Sure it would be at lot more time consuming (maybe an hour), but I feel like it be overall worth it. | ||
shindigs
United States4795 Posts
We will have a season "6.5" aka a league after February. Unfortunately I guess this was not made clear but we plan on having 2 seasons a year - so we will have CSL for all of the academic school year. Maybe something in the summer, but we're focused on executing for the current academic year. Its interesting you bring this up because we had a lot of of schools also say that the season is way too long, and people lost interest so we opted to go for the 2 season format. I think this can be remedied with the initial proposition of the dual league system - premiere league and recreational league. Also, some schools also gave us feedback that they wanted to play more local schools rather than a variety. I think this issue coupled with the one season/two season a year format is something that will need broader polling and surveys to figure out what works best for everyone because I think this is another divisive issue along with 2v2. OMG WEBSITE I think we can all agree that the website has seen better days, but no one on staff is sitting back and thinking that everything is going dandy. The website affects everyone - not only the players but everyone who has to write for the league, cast for the league, and match admin so the staff have had to carry the burden as well. Our web developers are discussing and fixing issues every single day, and I apologize if the changes are not coming out fast enough to reflect that. With everyone on the CSL staff having participated (or still participating) in CSL, we all know what issues exist and what needs to be fixed. We're currently looking at workarounds for playoffs bracket so we can manage the league more properly and give everyone the CSL experience people are more accustomed to. During this time, more issues with the website will be fixed. We've also seriously considered running everyone on pen/paper/spreadsheets if it comes down to it because we know the experience is valuable. Also fixes to SC2 stats were rolled out today, with a small LoL bug stat bug still lurking around. Hope you guys enjoyed your free 300 wins while they lasted! future stuff We've discussed hosting a mini league with a few schools to solely test the functionality of the new website, depends on time and if we can execute it properly. We've said time and time again internally that we want to bring back the "lower league" divisions so hopefully your recruiting efforts were not in vain. We could not do it this season with the new website and the new global format, but we've taken note and will aim to improve. Again, the next season is technically post February to summer so you can expect CSL all year. I'll see what we can do to get a rec league up ASAP since its something I personally want to see accomplished. Anyway benji, thanks a ton for the feedback and what you do in keeping the Columbia team together. We really keep going for you guys and we hear your feedback loud and clear edit: oops responded to an old post but still hope the info was useful | ||
Megaliskuu
United States5123 Posts
On November 26 2012 15:10 Martinni wrote: You're right on every point.. they had something very nice going on last year and now so many changes without consulting the community before. This current season is just a disaster. I would also like to add the BO1 format they currently run isn't really suited for a starcraft league. You can't judge a player's strength by just one match. Having BO3 would add a very real mental aspect to it. Sure it would be at lot more time consuming (maybe an hour), but I feel like it be overall worth it. Its fine for a team league, just look at every proleague ever. | ||
Xeris
Iran17695 Posts
Great posts. You will see that the website when complete will be pretty awesome. Also, don't believe that we started the overhaul of the website a few weeks before the season. The re-design was laid out immediately after the CSL finals, and was only heightened when we expanded the scope of our project to fit AZUBU's needs. The problem however is that during the summer, our dev. team had 6 people who were tasked with different areas. Our head developer completely disappeared in August, leaving the rest of the dev. team without any direction or knowledge of the details needed to complete the website [anybody who thinks it's easy to build a site like ours is very naive about development....]. We also lost the only developer on the staff who was capable of front-end coding. This, coupled with all the changes we needed to add (multi-region, LoL support) slowed down the process. Throughout the summer, our 6 man dev team became whittled down to just two, each of whom have school, work, and families to support. I understand everyone's frustration and believe me, nobody feels it more than me - I've put my life (literally) into this project and it pains me to not be able to have a seamless website for you all. I love the dev team for the work they've been putting in, and they are working their hardest to ensure that the problems get fixed and all the new features are added. Rest assured that the work will be done and the website will run the way you all deserve it to run, I promise this! I'm spending my own money to help make sure this happens. With respect to the format/etc ... Every season we ask for feedback about the season format. We've switched off between doing two seasons in a year and doing one long season. Generally it seems like people preferred two seasons due to multiple reasons which I won't list here because it's been discussed a lot. So we decided on two seasons. We originally planned for a two division structure (Division 1, registration fees, prize pool, etc for more competitive schools... and Division 2, free to play for more casual schools). With AZUBU we want to do something big which is why we opted for this format for the season. Our timetable was altered (original schedule: October - January, then February - May) because of this and due to the delayed start we had to truncate the regular season format. Expect a more regular CSL format moving forward. Over the summer we will build in the two-division structure so that our next fall season will have a competitive and casual division. This is a promise! Further - we do not feel comfortable at this time with registration fees so we will not have them until we are 100% certain that our product is smooth, streamlined, and the user experience is up to our high standards. So hopefully nobody is worried about that! Our next season will be from March - early June, and over the summer we will have a recreational league and other fun activities while we prepare the site for the next fall. Thanks for the constructive feedback and I hope I've explained some of the issues and underlying problems. We hope that despite the website difficulty everyone is enjoying the CSL, and if not... please have patience as we work through the issues !! <333333333333333333333333333 -Duran | ||
warshop
Canada490 Posts
An unpolished experience We do hope next year will be better, but this one has been a complete letdown. Problems do occur, granted, but as you said, you wanted something big, but in the end, the experience left us very unsatisfied. Personally, a big prize pool is interesting, but it's the quality and not the quantity that made CSL special. Respectfully (and imho), I think you should of kept the old website and postponed the sponsorship of AZUBU (or just changed the templates/colors of the old one...?). You went from a functional website to a test product (forgive the harsh words, but in terms on functionalities, it went backward). The current format This season would of been much better had it been longer and matches each week were BO3 AND played against only one university, as martinni pointed out. Future I'm happy to hear that there will be a season after the finals. It's a shame though that it happens so late in the semester though. In hope for a better CSL, yours truly, Warshop École de technologie supérieure (joined CSL in autumn 2010) | ||
Xeris
Iran17695 Posts
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syncopate
United States70 Posts
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laLAlA[uC]
Canada963 Posts
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Ender2701
United States581 Posts
Edit: Talked to CSL, looks like it's top 4 | ||
Novice
United States115 Posts
Here is our division, #1 seed Berkeley, #2 SFSU, #3 Nebraska Lincoln, #4 Cal Poly Our opponents, Division Blue 12 #1 North Dakota, #2 Manitoba, #3 Saskatchewon, #4 Rowan So shouldnt it be, UCB vs Rowan, SFSU vs Saskatchewon, Nebraska Lincoln vs Manitoba, and Cal Poly vs North Dakota?? Instead they have UCB (1) vs Saskatchewon (3), SFSU (2) vs Manitoba (2), Cal Poly (4) vs Rowan (4), and Nebraska-Lincoln (3) vs North Dakota (1) Not only do our opponents not make sense, but they have UCB and SFSU, if both beat their first round opponents, playing against each other in the very next round. What is the point of the season and getting the top 4 from each division, if you're just going to make them play each other all over again in the second round? UCB and SFSU literally just played each other the very last week of the season, so you're going to have them possibly play each other again on the first week of playoffs, now how does that make sense? I was to understand that seeding in brackets was to put the higher seed vs lower seed to reward teams for their efforts/work during the season, but it seems like they randomly picked two divisions, threw them together and THEN they put them all next to each other so that if two teams from the same division make it out of the first round that they'll just play each other again, basically a rematch from the season. Smh man, smh..... | ||
Alryk
United States2718 Posts
On November 26 2012 16:02 Megaliskuu wrote: Its fine for a team league, just look at every proleague ever. BW's a diff game mega, I think even OSL is changing soon Bo1's are bad for SC2, even some kespa players admitted it in interviews. On October 30 2012 05:19 Qurmish wrote: I completely agree with everything the clm100 said in his post above, and apologize for the way my previous concerns were voiced on the CSL website, which contributed to a massive flamefest. I am extremely disappointed with many of the decisions that the CSL has made this season. I think it is great that there is a big name sponsor and there will be a live event---it sounds like a ton of fun and I can't wait to watch it; but, so many features that made the CSL such a great league were sacrificed to make this happen. This season's format does not make very much sense in the context of a college league. I only say this because of how much I have enjoyed participating in the CSL, and want the league to continue to improve in coming years. I believe that with this format there will be a dramatic decrease in participation from schools in the future. It is completely untenable and is antithetical to (what I thought) was the spirit of the league. I wanted to bring to your attention some of the concerns that I and many of my teammates who participate in this league, have with the current format. 1) The timeline is not appropriate for a college league. For anyone that has not looked at the season schedule yet, the regular season will be only four weeks long. In most divisions this will mean a total of 6 matches in the regular season. The season itself (including the grand finals) will end in February, after a month long break between the semi-finals. The most enjoyable part of this league was that it stretched throughout the entire school year. We played matches that everyone got excited about, and were an extremely enjoyable distraction from schoolwork. This season will not offer that investment from everyone in our community in Starcraft throughout the entire year. During the CSL season, interest in Starcraft goes way up, and our participation in Starcraft based campus events is much higher than usual. With this format, we will have a very short burst of excitement, which will die off quickly. We are looking for other ways to keep this excitement up through other leagues and clan wars, but it is a shame that the CSL, which filled this role all of last year, will fall short. The best part about the previous format was that it ran at a relaxed schedule. People could put the time into practicing as their schedules permitted with school. Having two matches per week makes this a lot more difficult than it had been previously. It will be very demanding to practice for two matches, put in 3 hours of continuous play over the weekend, and maintain schoolwork. 2) Matches scheduled through winter break. This was such a bad idea---I can't even begin to understand why this was deemed acceptable. The vast majority of college students will travel over winter break, and many will travel out of the country to places without easy access to internet. Two of our best players will be travelling outside of the United States over the break and will be unable to play at all. Irrespective of that, you now force players to choose between spending time with their families and friends and practicing/playing in the playoffs. This is a terrible burden to place on people who have very limited time home, and will make many of them lose interest in the competition altogether. Nobody should have to choose between these two things. 3) The division system does not allow for competition between a variety of schools. As a consequence of only playing six regular season matches, there will not be any inter-division competition. I really enjoyed meeting and testing the mettle of other teams from other parts of the country during the second half of the season. Now, we will only get exposure to a very small number of schools and will not interact with the vast majority of other schools that compete in the CSL. 4) The complete overhaul of the website weeks before the season started. There have been so many problems with this website that have already been mentioned and are not worth repeating. I do not understand why, if a site redesign was necessary for coding reasons, this couldn't have happened months in advance of the season starting. The likelihood that everything will be functional and on the level of the previous site look very bleak now. If it was too much to manage to get a new site up and running and put the new league together, then why try to do both? 5) The misinformation that was given out just days before the season started. From the perspective of a community organizer and someone who was trying to increase interest in Starcraft, this misinformation made our lives a lot harder than they needed to be. We specifically tried to recruit players of lower skill levels and get them engaged, only to be shut down hard at the last minute. Xeris, you said that he hopes that this will be featured in upcoming seasons, which is great, but the part that I don't think you understand is that it was extremely frustrating that you laid out the season format months in advance, only to completely renege on all of those decisions literally at the last minute. At some point you just have to make a decision and stick with it instead of leading everyone around by the nose because it adversely affects the people that you have participating in your league. It is extremely bad practice to continue to put out incorrect information. I guess I want to know what other schools think. I can say when I read the changes I was immediately disappointed and was very surprised by the reaction from everyone else in the community. Obviously there were some trade-offs, and some of the new additions are very exciting. But, the additions came at the expense of the core elements of the league. Is everyone happy with the fact that the entire season will only be 6 matches, and that the vast majority of schools will only be able to participate for the month of November? I would want to know if these changes were 100% intentional, or a consequence of putting this deal together with Azubu at the last minute. It seems pretty objectively bad from the perspective of having an enjoyable league, which allows for participation from schools of all different skill levels. Participating in this league forged some tremendous friendships at our school, and we have all been very excited to participate. Honestly, I thought that last year's league format was nearly perfect, and the changes that were announced back in August (2 division system, 2 seasons per year) would have made the league even better. I can't really understand the logic behind many of the recent changes, and I know it is too late to change anything now. I am hoping by writing this that the CSL will reconsider all of the changes that they made this year, and return to the original format in the future. I also, maybe naively, hope that there will be some effort put into arranging some sort of league for after February, when the league finishes. What is the possibility of some sort of season 6.5 or Spring/Summer season happening to supplement the extremely truncated season 6? Thank you to Hazleynut, Xeris, and all of the folks at the Collegiate Starleague. I don't write this because I want to add unneeded negativity to the community, but because I think this league can be a lot better. Thanks, Benji Columbia University A lot of this. The website overhaul was awful. Half of it still isn't even available. I don't necessarily mind a shorter season. But winter break games are weird, if you don't have a laptop, most people won't be able to play (bad). And CSL got way too into a "big prize pool" or whatever with Azubu. College kids don't need a 40k prize pool to 5-10 players! Distribute that farther down so that Ro16 isn't getting 500$, and make first prize like 20k. That's pretty reasonable imo. I support Bo3 for games. They're all played at the same time anyways, so a Bo3 makes sense time wise. Maybe it would be harder to cast a whole match, but there isn't really an explicit streaming schedule anyways. SLOWER matches, more organization, and better prizepool distribution, please! We don't need to be IPL. Don't forget how y'all got started, you can seriously grow really intensely without having the highest 1st prize in all team leagues or anything. | ||
syncopate
United States70 Posts
Novice is completely right that the bracket was done incorrectly -- the seeding is backwards and causes multiple instances of division-leaders to face off in just the second round. Hoping this gets attention from CSL and is not swept under the rug | ||
Origamimouse
United States18 Posts
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AoPacHxX0t51dE91WnF1RUhlbGlLRzFXdnNHVXVzOVE | ||
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