Recently, we were approached by members of our community with issues that they had experienced during Spring 2020.
At Collegiate Esports Association, we aim to promote the growth and advancement of collegiate esports by putting players first and fostering friendly competition. We are always open to constructive feedback that will improve the quality for the collegiate players in our league. The input we received is without a doubt, invaluable for us. While we try collect feedback about our league at the end of each season, we rarely receive feedback that is as varied and detailed at a large quantity. We appreciate the time and effort and want to properly take our time to fully address the issues. We will be detailing how we have already addressed and begun to address the more pressing issues, along with when and how we plan to put in a process to handle less time sensitive issues.
From our understanding, the issues are more centered around the Invite League. However, some points are shared aspects between Invite League and Open League. We recognize the different categories these issues fall into and will first respond to issues that are specifically about Invite League, then move on to address those that can raise concerns for both leagues.
Applicable to Invite League
Long ticket response time
We received feedback that the average time taken to fully resolve the issues in a ticket is much longer than that in Open League and tickets were open for too long after its conclusion.
We have taken immediate action and these changes are not only visible in the form of archived tickets for those who had opened these tickets, but also in the Playoff tickets. We have cleaned up the ticket backlog recently thanks to a few dedicated League Admins and Statistics members. To reduce the delay in responses for Playoffs, team specific tickets have been assigned to League Admins to handle issues.
We will discuss and enact a long-term procedure to ensure tickets are addressed in a timely fashion by June 14th, 2020.
Lack of communication between players and League Administration
We received feedback that some Invite League teams were unclear about the format of the tournament especially about Playoffs and Relegations.
As far as Playoffs and Relegations, we had not been made aware that teams did not understand the process. We had communicated with the teams at the beginning of the season via the Invite Round Table, discussing how Playoffs and Relegations would work. We were contacted once on March 24th, 2020, with questions about how these post-season sections would work, and explained the process within a few hours. Based on the information we had, we believe that we communicated how the post-season works reasonably. However, once the season ends, we will discuss additional methods to touch base with teams. We understand that the tournament structure for Spring 2020 differed from that of Fall 2019 due to our attempt to implement the suggestions from the previous season and could have caused confusion.
We plan on running a more conventional season structure in the future.
Convoluted Invite Discord
We received feedback that the Invite Discord is too hard to find information and had a different format from Open Discord.
We were in a period of leadership transition for Invite League this season, which was not handled or communicated as effectively as we wanted. This has resulted in the Invite Discord not being updated as frequently and it fell through the cracks. We recognized that there was a delay in the distribution of initial batch of information in the beginning of the season. To address this, we went through the Invite Discord and updated all relevant information.
We will discuss this issue again along with our future plans for Invite League.
Lack of punishment for teams that withdraw
We received feedback that the current punishments and prize pool penalty are not enough to deter teams from withdrawing from Invite League.
We understand that the lack of punishment for dropping out is frustrating. We also want to ensure teams stay in our league and continue to participate for a more enjoyable experience for everyone. We do not take deposits or registration fees from teams to alleviate the financial responsibility and remove the potential barrier to entry for our participants. Putting a fee requirement could be a viable solution to deter teams from withdrawing. However, it is an idea we cannot entertain as it goes strongly against our beliefs of an openly accessible tournament for collegiate students. Invite League consists of a much smaller number of teams compared to Open League, where each team has a significant influence on the season’s structure and schedule. We will ban Invite teams that drop out during the season for at least an additional season.
We will discuss the details and additional solutions by June 14th, 2020.
Cross-Divisional matches in Invite
We received feedback that Cross-Divisional matches caused more confusion for this season and did not match the purpose of the seeding system.
We agree that Cross-Divisional matches were a bad fit for our league, to say the least. As stated before, our tournament structure for this season was different than that of Fall 2019 as we attempted to implement suggestions from the previous season. We did not anticipate the differences between our league and other sports leagues that use Cross-Divisional matches to have this much of an effect.
We do not plan on having Cross-Divisional matches in the future.
Lack of incentives for playing in Invite
We received feedback that Invite teams should have more reasons to play in Invite, not just a bigger prize pool and harder matches.
We understand that there were some teams who were assigned difficult default days that did not fit into their schedule. We will ensure teams are more likely to get a more preferable default day in future seasons. In the beginning of the season, we extended the “dibbing” process to Invite League along with Open League to better plan production and help with concerns regarding streaming issues. It has been brought to our attention that the process was not clear for all Invite teams.
We will continue to communicate with the Invite Round Table and discuss how to raise the status of Invite Discord and its teams beyond just a bigger prize pool by June 14th, 2020.
Applicable to both Invite League and Open League
Match reports delayed for multiple weeks
We received feedback that many of the match reports were delayed for multiple weeks without an additional default date.
This season, we had an unprecedented turn of events due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on academic institutions. We decided it was more important to allow teams the flexibility to play their matches. Open League match reports were given the final deadline of 1:00PM ET on April 1st, 2020. Invite League match reports were given the final deadline of 1:00PM ET on April 5th, 2020. While this change had some unintended effects, we believe that it was overall beneficial to the teams and the league to allow the teams this level of flexibility.
We will still discuss a method to address such emergencies more effectively by June 14th, 2020.
Lack of consistency in leaderboard structure
We received feedback that it was confusing to switch from a points leaderboard to a points per match leaderboard system mid-season.
We understand that points per match is harder to calculate points needed to advance or hold a spot in the standings. We had teams that withdrew or were disqualified throughout the season, which caused an imbalance in number of matches per division. Seeding teams purely based on points puts a team that is in a division with less teams at a disadvantage as the maximum amount of points earnable differs from a team that is in a division with full teams participating. We implemented points per match in the leaderboard to normalize the seeding for Playoffs.
We are likely to continue using points per match for all rankings in the future. A concrete decision will be made by June 14th, 2020.
Lack of consistency in rules
We received feedback that there was an inconsistency in rules, singling out how banned operators were handled and how allowing the banned operators in part way through the season should have implied that Bank should have replaced Theme Park partway through the season.
We intended to allow Kali and Wamai for the whole season, as they were released two months before the season started, and, in our judgement, were balanced enough to not be quarantined for longer. However, due to community feedback and active conversation with teams before the season started and focus on the difficulty of finding scrims with Kali and Wamai unbanned, we reevaluated the decision, and decided to meet halfway. This would allow these operators to be played when ESL allowed them.
In retrospect, this was too vague. There were some announcements regarding Kali and Wamai that seemed inconsistent or contradictory due to “when ESL allows them” being open to interpretation. In the future, we plan on reverting back to our original wording for the rule where
“operators will not be added during a CEA season and operators will have to be evaluated for at least two months before we consider allowing them for a given season”
and state clearly when certain rules take effect. We do not agree that the same logic would lead to adding Theme Park to the map pool. Teams were informed well in advance that Kali and Wamai will be allowed, while Theme Park was an unconfirmed rumor for most of the season. As explained above, we will be making our own rulings with regards to operators and map pools in the future.
Mid-season handbook edits
We received feedback that there were concerns regarding the edits to the handbook.
In general, we try to keep handbook changes to a minimum, except when new information is brought up due to questions, or a mismatch between how a rule is written and how a rule is enforced. This season, some major issues with the handbook were rooted in new and relatively complex processes or issues being introduced before and throughout the season, such as a new format for Invite League and COVID-19.
To alleviate these issues, we plan to avoid implementing complex processes like this season’s Invite League format. However, we will continue to edit the handbook during the season as necessary. We believe that the handbook should reflect how rulings are made. Therefore, when issues with the handbook are brought up, we fix them, instead of only answering a question in #questions or #support in the Discord, hoping everyone will read it. When these changes do happen, we try to be as transparent as possible, which sometimes results in important updates being buried under simple rephrasing. We will continue to discuss possibilities for reducing changelog noise once the season concludes with input from Team Representatives.
Quality of stream and observers
We received feedback that there were issues with production regarding familiarity of rules for observers.
We have also noticed the issues with production and conducted an Observer Workshop on April 2nd, 2020. We have also created a document that serves as a general operating guideline and reference for relatively common infractions. We will continue to improve the mentioned document to ensure it has the essential details for our Observers.
We will also discuss a timeline and process for ensuring the quality of our streams and Observers once the season ends and implement these changes for Summer League. An official solution will be decided by June 14th, 2020.
Once again, we appreciate the feedback we receive and will continue to improve the league.
Thank You,
Collegiate Esports Association
