468
« on: March 25, 2013, 05:32:13 am »
Step by step, huh?
You misunderstand something important. This is not a "league". This is just an formalization of team scrimmages in a way which promotes higher level play on both sides, documents the matches in a way that converts them into accessible content for everyone, as well as test out potential new rulesets designed to address serious issues in the current competitive scene. There is no "ranking". This is not a 16 man tournament. This is one best of five set at a time. As such, if aspects of the current ruleset end up not working (for instance best of five being untenable from a time perspective), they can be adjusted easily. This also gives us a lot of flexibility in scheduling since we're only working between two teams and qwerty's schedule.
As for the loadout picking/counterpicking, that is a very basic mechanic utilized by many competitive gaming organizations. In a multi-game set you almost always give pick advantage to the losing side. Examples of this are loser picking maps in StarCraft and winners being character locked in fighting games. This allows players to strategically counterpick what their opponent is doing and rewards more diverse strategy. Weapon bans exist for similar purpose: to prevent people from relying too heavily on single strategies/loadouts, opens up potential new strategies which would have hard counters otherwise, as well as helping keep the borderline "overpowered" weapons from seeing play every game.
I have many issues with the Cogs in both the competitive and organizational aspects, and frankly I do not feel it's accomplishing anything productive. I also find it surprising that you portray it as the end all be all after it's two weeks of existence ("competitive heart of this game", "can only be done by encouraging the cogs"), as if nothing else could ever exist which contributes to those ideals. It's kind of a silly opinion, if you ask me.
You two are the first to bring up substantial issue (I ran it by a few people before posting and they all seemed on-board), and all the criticisms you brought in your posts seem fraught with misunderstanding of what we're actually trying to do.
So yes, if you're afraid this will destroy the GOIO community, feel free to not participate.
EDIT: I apologize if my response comes off as harsh, but you seemed to attack the idea with such fervor I felt it appropriate to display a similar amount of enthusiasm.