When you look at the Clanbase Ladder Page for Enemy Territory, it is sad to see so much inactivity in all but the EU & Poland ladders.
This brings me to the biggest question: why are the CB ladders getting so little attention. Is it the weird chess related ELO system? The absence of prizes? Are there too many ladders? Are clans rather playing cups instead of ladder matches? And if so, why are those clans dropping out of the cups so often?
So many questions and to be honest I do not have many answers, but I hope this column could free some opinions.
Personally I think Clanbase ladders should be modified to make Europe's #1 spot more interesting. So how do we get to that? Here are some of my ideas.
Ladder clean-up
First of all, kill all non-active ladders and review active ones regularly. If you look at the numbers the only ladders - based on activity - that should be kept today are:
Benelux 3vs3
EU 6vs6
EU 3vs3
EU 1vs1
Poland 6vs6
Poland 3vs3
All the rest appear to have no more reason of existance.
Use ladders for invites to the EC
Secondly I think the ladders should be used to as a benchmark for EuroCup qualifiers & perhaps even direct invites. If you need a more objective measurement of a team's performance it is best to put them in a ladder.
Granted, in the beginning this will certainly create the effect that some teams will play lots of matches to get high points. But when the EC arrives and CB rules say that e.g. only the top 8 of the EU are invited directly and the following 16 need qualifiers, we can expect a surge in activity of the "self pronounced EC candidates" in order to rise their position. Furthermore, it will give gamestv.org more chances of broadcasting interesting top EU ladder matches.
Working this way will also eliminate the "subjectiveness" of the EC direct invite & qualifiers as it is perceived today. By binding EC qualification to the ladder position, clans that play many officials will get rewarded for their activity, clans that only live from their "reputation" but fail to play officials shouldn't get rewarded. It will also eliminate all discussion on ego's & reputations: if you want into EC, simply play... It's a harsh but simple to understand rule.
Sponsor the ladders
Thirdly - and this is purely a brainstorm - perhaps some of the CB prize money could be awarded on a quarterly basis / half year basis to the ladder n° 1, 2 & 3? Or perhaps even to the most "evolved" clan?
The trick is to find a way to make clans benefit from playing the ladder regularly. In a non-EC quarter you can still give prize money to some clans, and this will surely provide some end-of-quarter action (given that the prizes are interesting enough).
Involve hosted / affiliated cups in the ladder ranking system
To conclude, why not combine the ELO ranking system with the well known ATP Tennis Ranking System? Suppose an organisation's cup follows the Clanbase rules or gets hosted by Clanbase: it would be easy to calculate a "quality of participants" parameter based on the positions in the ladder.
The first 3 teams of this cup could then get a certain number of extra ranking points for the ladder, relative to the quality of the cup. As such, teams that rather play cups than ladder matches still see their "performance" reflected in a more or less "official" way.
Working this way you can even link performance from Warleagues, NxM, Get Cup & other cups / leagues to the Clanbase ranking system to get a more structured overview of who's top in the ET scene.
Conclusion
I hope to have given some food for thought about the ladder system and a more structured way of ranking the clans in the scene. The clean-ups & the invites should be fairly easy to realise, the prizes & links to other cups are certainly an open question for the admins & community to debate.
Although I know many think ET is dead, I'm still convinced that ET is alive & can benefit from these changes. And, if they work, we're setting ourselves up for a good RTCW2 competitive scene! It never hurts to look ahead.
This brings me to the biggest question: why are the CB ladders getting so little attention. Is it the weird chess related ELO system? The absence of prizes? Are there too many ladders? Are clans rather playing cups instead of ladder matches? And if so, why are those clans dropping out of the cups so often?
So many questions and to be honest I do not have many answers, but I hope this column could free some opinions.
Personally I think Clanbase ladders should be modified to make Europe's #1 spot more interesting. So how do we get to that? Here are some of my ideas.
Ladder clean-up
First of all, kill all non-active ladders and review active ones regularly. If you look at the numbers the only ladders - based on activity - that should be kept today are:
Benelux 3vs3 EU 6vs6 EU 3vs3 EU 1vs1 Poland 6vs6 Poland 3vs3All the rest appear to have no more reason of existance.
Use ladders for invites to the EC
Secondly I think the ladders should be used to as a benchmark for EuroCup qualifiers & perhaps even direct invites. If you need a more objective measurement of a team's performance it is best to put them in a ladder.
Granted, in the beginning this will certainly create the effect that some teams will play lots of matches to get high points. But when the EC arrives and CB rules say that e.g. only the top 8 of the EU are invited directly and the following 16 need qualifiers, we can expect a surge in activity of the "self pronounced EC candidates" in order to rise their position. Furthermore, it will give gamestv.org more chances of broadcasting interesting top EU ladder matches.
Working this way will also eliminate the "subjectiveness" of the EC direct invite & qualifiers as it is perceived today. By binding EC qualification to the ladder position, clans that play many officials will get rewarded for their activity, clans that only live from their "reputation" but fail to play officials shouldn't get rewarded. It will also eliminate all discussion on ego's & reputations: if you want into EC, simply play... It's a harsh but simple to understand rule.
Sponsor the ladders
Thirdly - and this is purely a brainstorm - perhaps some of the CB prize money could be awarded on a quarterly basis / half year basis to the ladder n° 1, 2 & 3? Or perhaps even to the most "evolved" clan?
The trick is to find a way to make clans benefit from playing the
ladder regularly. In a non-EC quarter you can still give prize money to some clans, and this will surely provide some end-of-quarter action (given that the prizes are interesting enough).Involve hosted / affiliated cups in the ladder ranking system
To conclude, why not combine the ELO ranking system with the well known ATP Tennis Ranking System? Suppose an organisation's cup follows the Clanbase rules or gets hosted by Clanbase: it would be easy to calculate a "quality of participants" parameter based on the positions in the ladder.
The first 3 teams of this cup could then get a certain number of extra ranking points for the ladder, relative to the quality of the cup. As such, teams that rather play cups than ladder matches still see their "performance" reflected in a more or less "official" way.
Working this way you can even link performance from Warleagues, NxM, Get Cup & other cups / leagues to the Clanbase ranking system to get a more structured overview of who's top in the ET scene.
Conclusion
I hope to have given some food for thought about the ladder system and a more structured way of ranking the clans in the scene. The clean-ups & the invites should be fairly easy to realise, the prizes & links to other cups are certainly an open question for the admins & community to debate.
Although I know many think ET is dead, I'm still convinced that ET is alive & can benefit from these changes. And, if they work, we're setting ourselves up for a good RTCW2 competitive scene! It never hurts to look ahead.
