Hopefully in this thread I can clarify some things about why the size of Salvation is so small and what our plans are for the future aswell as start a discussion with your input about what our next step should be.
If and when we expand it will be similar to the division system of EQL, we would add a 2nd division where the players who weren't picked to the first division would play.
WE WILL NOT EXPAND TO ONE HUGE DIVISION UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
We wish to keep the high level of skill and there's not enough good players (in our opinion) to make even more teams, I'm sorry if this offends you but we won't change on this subject.
First of all I want people to understand that we've had ideas and plans for an expansion of the Salvation draft league but decided not to go with it for the first season.
We had some legit concerns that I think most of you will agree with:
We didn't have a great timetable, summer is soon upon us and we didn't want to wait untill fall/winter to start up the league, this scene isn't exactly getting any younger and we've taken some hard hits lately, our community size is at an all time low, for example we only have 24 teams in EQL this season (I'm not putting blame on EQL in any way, I'm just describing our situation).
So for us waiting wasn't really an option, we wanted to get some excitement and interest back into quake ASAP.
With that said, we felt like we didn't have enough time nor manpower to justify trying to create a 2nd division with another 10~ teams for this season.
As you can see the signup period is less than 10 days and we had no captains for a 2nd division which would take time to recruit, and looking at the amount of signups sofar we probably wouldn't have been able to get enough players for a 2nd division on such short notice.
Getting captains, players and making a schedule that would work for a 2nd division we would need more time and probably more admins so we stuck with something we thought we could handle and that would be a great testing ground to see if a draft league is anything for the future of the qw-scene.
To summarize, we first wanted a trial season to see if the league is anything the quake players are interested in, and to see what eventual problems we will encounter and there was not enough time for us to justify a league on a larger scale just yet and if we took on too much and tried to please too many, we might've ended up pleasing noone.
Our plans for the future
If the league is a success and that players would like to see a 2nd season, then if there is enough interest we are planning to create a 2nd division similar to how div1 and div2 have worked in past EQL seasons (play their own groupstage and playoffs).
A big question is if there's enough people who would want to play in a 2nd division, you won't be playing with milton, para, bps etc.
The skill lvl should end up being around div2 and lower.
One idea we've been contemplating if we have enough interest for a 2nd division would be "team affiliates", we would first of get 10 captains for the 2nd division and have them draft their players after the 1st division draft is over and instead of free agency each 2nd division team will be "paired up" with a 1st division team to become sort of like sd1 and sd2 or sr1 and sr2.
So when a 1st division team would need to use a free agent they would have to use a player from their affiliate.
I hope to create a sort of "sense of family" between the team affiliates, that perhaps when the 1st div team needs a standin for a prac they will get someone from their affiliate, the tactics talks that could be going on in the div1 team would hopefully be shared with the affiliate.
I would love for the teams to share a priv IRC channel etc, so the 2nd div team can be bit apart and see what goes on with div0 players and be able to ask for advice and hopefully learn a little bit.
Ofcourse how much sharing, bonding and teaching will actually go on is entirely up to the players and alot of people might be sceptical about this, but I think putting a few guys under the same roof and hopefully removing the feeling of "this is a complete stranger talking to me" it would be less overwhelming and almost feel natural to help out a little bit with tactics, give some suggestions and use the 2nd div players for pracs if needed, they are afterall my "teammates".
Thanks for reading and I hope some things were cleared up for you and we could get your opinion and ideas for how an expansion would look.
If and when we expand it will be similar to the division system of EQL, we would add a 2nd division where the players who weren't picked to the first division would play.
WE WILL NOT EXPAND TO ONE HUGE DIVISION UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
We wish to keep the high level of skill and there's not enough good players (in our opinion) to make even more teams, I'm sorry if this offends you but we won't change on this subject.
First of all I want people to understand that we've had ideas and plans for an expansion of the Salvation draft league but decided not to go with it for the first season.
We had some legit concerns that I think most of you will agree with:
We didn't have a great timetable, summer is soon upon us and we didn't want to wait untill fall/winter to start up the league, this scene isn't exactly getting any younger and we've taken some hard hits lately, our community size is at an all time low, for example we only have 24 teams in EQL this season (I'm not putting blame on EQL in any way, I'm just describing our situation).
So for us waiting wasn't really an option, we wanted to get some excitement and interest back into quake ASAP.
With that said, we felt like we didn't have enough time nor manpower to justify trying to create a 2nd division with another 10~ teams for this season.
As you can see the signup period is less than 10 days and we had no captains for a 2nd division which would take time to recruit, and looking at the amount of signups sofar we probably wouldn't have been able to get enough players for a 2nd division on such short notice.
Getting captains, players and making a schedule that would work for a 2nd division we would need more time and probably more admins so we stuck with something we thought we could handle and that would be a great testing ground to see if a draft league is anything for the future of the qw-scene.
To summarize, we first wanted a trial season to see if the league is anything the quake players are interested in, and to see what eventual problems we will encounter and there was not enough time for us to justify a league on a larger scale just yet and if we took on too much and tried to please too many, we might've ended up pleasing noone.
Our plans for the future
If the league is a success and that players would like to see a 2nd season, then if there is enough interest we are planning to create a 2nd division similar to how div1 and div2 have worked in past EQL seasons (play their own groupstage and playoffs).
A big question is if there's enough people who would want to play in a 2nd division, you won't be playing with milton, para, bps etc.
The skill lvl should end up being around div2 and lower.
One idea we've been contemplating if we have enough interest for a 2nd division would be "team affiliates", we would first of get 10 captains for the 2nd division and have them draft their players after the 1st division draft is over and instead of free agency each 2nd division team will be "paired up" with a 1st division team to become sort of like sd1 and sd2 or sr1 and sr2.
So when a 1st division team would need to use a free agent they would have to use a player from their affiliate.
I hope to create a sort of "sense of family" between the team affiliates, that perhaps when the 1st div team needs a standin for a prac they will get someone from their affiliate, the tactics talks that could be going on in the div1 team would hopefully be shared with the affiliate.
I would love for the teams to share a priv IRC channel etc, so the 2nd div team can be bit apart and see what goes on with div0 players and be able to ask for advice and hopefully learn a little bit.
Ofcourse how much sharing, bonding and teaching will actually go on is entirely up to the players and alot of people might be sceptical about this, but I think putting a few guys under the same roof and hopefully removing the feeling of "this is a complete stranger talking to me" it would be less overwhelming and almost feel natural to help out a little bit with tactics, give some suggestions and use the 2nd div players for pracs if needed, they are afterall my "teammates".
Thanks for reading and I hope some things were cleared up for you and we could get your opinion and ideas for how an expansion would look.