Your opinions are always so insightful.
First, the SCS is the only 8-player event currently running. But we've had Aero 3 (4-player), Blood and Brass (8-player) and now Cronus (4-player) which at the current state of competitive is a good mix for all teams to play in event they enjoy. Seeing as most clans can not field 8-player teams you can't fault organizers for putting on 4-player competitions.
Just because SCS is the only 8-player event doesn't mean it should be serious. The SCS was created as a practice event. For teams to come together to practice on a reliable basis. If the organizers of SCS would like to create a serious 8-player event they can but that doesn't mean they should change the intent of the SCS. My comment doesn't portray cluelessness yet quite the opposite. I've actually spent time talking to people of the community and having members fill out surveys. Which if you would like to you can fill one out too. RIGHT HERE because I don't have a large enough ego to think that I know everything that the community thinks and will change the event based on what the communities feedback is.
Which comes to your last comment...just because the SCS has, at 1 point in time, a higher turn out than the Blood and Brass does not mean that the Blood and Brass was a failure. Not only has quite a lot of the participants personally told me they thought it was a success but 100% of the responses from the survey said they enjoyed playing in the event. The lack of turn out comes from the lack of teams able to field 8-players than it was about the event itself.
Again, there's irony in you criticizing other organizers (me, in this case) for actions which you yourself are more guilty of than anyone else. BoCA (the group for which you are a member) notoriously tried to steal SCS's time slot, with no communication to the SCS organizational team. You ignored concern from the community about the lengthy and complex format your group devised. You hid behind anonymous accounts, so we were never quite sure who was responsible for saying what.
So you want to criticize
me for not listening to community feedback?
While
I was actively organizing GOIO events, I was constantly reaching out to team leaders and other community members. This is evidenced not only in notes I took from those discussions, or from the threads in which I openly polled the community, but also from the changes in formats and rulesets from event to event. I was constantly learning from the advice and opinions of others, as well as my own mistakes.
(The final tournament I organized, Sky League, remains to date the largest competitive GOIO event.)
You have yet to display such self-reflection, instead choosing to imply fault with those who organize and participate in another event: the Sunday Community Skirmish (an event with which you and your group have no affiliation). You demonstrate this not only in the post I have quoted above, but also in your "survey", which includes the following question:
For Sunday Community Skirmish: Do you think it has become "too serious" and why or why not?
This sentiment comes up from time to time, with little quantification as to what "too serious" even means, why it shouldn't be so, or how to make it not so. As someone else in this thread brought up: SCS has only been as competitive as the participants want it to be. If anything, SCS's
format has become
more friendly to less experienced teams, with the change to double-elimination best of one series.
If players want to participate in a "less serious" event, there are such events available to them already. Iron Fork happens every week on Friday. The Dev Games every Tuesday and Thursday. Seasonal events with rolling signups such as Aerodrome and TimmyB fall onto that side of the spectrum as well.
As for 4-player signups vs 8-player signups, it should be obvious that a team of eight practicing together will be more coordinated than single ships paired together. Not to disparage 4-player events (variety is fine), but they are inherently a lower level of competition.
"But Skrimskraw said it was a practice event".
Why do you think we must hold literally to the outdated messaging of the original organizer? The event has been running for almost two years now and has changed hands multiple times. The ruleset has evolved as necessitated by the community. Lueosi has been doing a great job running SCS. Given his commitment to the game and experience in the competitive community, you'd be hard pressed to find someone more well-suited for the task.
You can make whatever justifications you want for the result of Blood and Brass. I will not, however, let the incompetence of you and the other members of BoCA poison the last true bastion of competitive Guns of Icarus.
