OpenRA

Personally I think a master should be able to deal with the shroud. It requires the player to scout to get the advantage of knowing what the map precisely looks like.

Also: is the ore-bug fixed? The bug where ore disappears under the fog of war giving a clue that a player has expanded there.

One more idea for solving the drop-out issue.

Call a voluntary/open practice week before the league starts, with i.e. 3 own servers (password protected) where only(!) Recuit devision players can face off against each other.
Send them a email, telling them that skill levels vary strongly in Recruits (tehre are allways some pro's in there too) and if they manage to get 30%-50% wins in the voluntary practice week matches they are ok, else they should think about forfeiting the league.

After the practice week, open Recruit player confirmation. After that (like days before league starts) send out the emails with the final League-Division<->player info and player contact information.

Result should be a more stable player pool and higher quality matches even in Recruits.

Rulebook for Season 3 has been posted:
http://www.sleipnirstuff.com/forum/view ... 82&t=19974

We really need random maps so shroud makes totaly sense again in masters division.

RNG maps? That would be awesome

I guess if the RAGL map pool isn't decided yet I'll do some last minute lobbying for some maps by Kazu:

Shadow Fiend
Roadkings
Pitfight KME

These maps all exhibit qualities I was promoting in my map design thread: http://www.sleipnirstuff.com/forum/view ... 82&t=19923

Kazu has really shown his map-making chops, and I would love to see one of his maps make the RAGL pool.

I don't want to stop you from adding Roadkings to the RAGL map pool (too much money IMO), but if there's no way to implement a random map picker, then I think you should implement a map banning system for the players.

For instance, the home player would get to ban the first map, the away player would get to ban 2 maps, and then the home player would have to pick from the remaining maps. In this way, players won't just be playing their most comfortable maps the entire time, and players will have to prepare more than just 2 or 3 maps.

I can see that the map pool will contain 12 maps at max. My humble suggestion is to limit the map pool to 7-8 maps. This way people can focus on map strategies better (easier to train). It's also more likely that all maps would be played (in Season 2 some maps were barely played).

In the rulebook I dont see the rules for who is host first and who gets to pick a faction first (minions/recruit). To prevent this from being a thing it would be nice to have some rules on that.

Suggestion: you determine who is host first by making the weekly schedules. The player who is mentioned first is host first and the guest must first select a faction. (e.g.: Week 1: NMM vs SOS - Im host, SoScared must pick faction).

This does require SoScared to setup the matches in such a way that everyone is host first as often as host 2nd.

A little more statistics that may help the recent conversations:

The Mode, Mean, and Median of number of different maps chosen by a player were: 3, 3.267, and 3 respectively. The most unique maps chosen by any one player was 6 (by barf and anjew) There were quite a few people who chose 1 or two the entire season.

SoScared wrote: Masters' Division 'explored map' vs shroud: I was a bit torn but in the end its hard to justify keeping shroud on in the Masters'. It definitely makes the division harder but practically it just diverts attention away from strategy and planning when having to calculate distances and areas by brain-mapping. Also, casting these top tier matches is easier with 'explored map'. 'Explored map' will be enabled in the Masters' for Season 3.

I personally dont think it changes anyones gameplay as long as they know the map.Its not hard to scout and it shows that players practise their maps rather than just planning it out in game. Players in masters should know what do on a map before they even open OpenRA and look at the map preview.
Regarding streaming/casting, there is a no shroud option that you can use and after 5 minutes or so, the map will be scouted.

Changing this rule takes away from some of the skill sets that players in masters need to have, making it "easier." It also minimises the differences between the divisions. Im the least experienced player in the Masters League and I feel changing this rule only benefits me because I dont practice.

so when do games start, if one decides to play..

Division tables and fixtures for Season 3 are publicized no later than Saturday, March 4th 00:00 UTC.

OMnom wrote: ...but if there's no way to implement a random map picker, then I think you should implement a map banning system for the players.

I think this is a great idea. I believe some of the bigger e-sport RTS tournaments use that with their knock-out formats. Players have a few maps (e.g. 2) that their opponent cannot pick against them for each week/round.

That could be implemented easily by allowing guest players to have 2 veto's against the host. Thus the host cannot just specialize on 1 map only and players can avoid a map or two they truly despises.

This would also make the map-pool picking process less hazardous.

noobmapmaker wrote: This does require SoScared to setup the matches in such a way that everyone is host first as often as host 2nd.

I'm not prepared to take on this this time around but your point is valid and should find its way into future seasons.