I'm pleased to announce Signups for Season 2 of the UBO!

As I announced recently, the season will be 4 weeks of regular season gaming, including league play on several maps. I have amended the pre-season timing to bring it down to 2 days instead of a week since last season's introduce of instrant stealing seemed to work pretty well.* Season info is as follows:

Website:
http://www.ubo.lazyslacker.com/index.php

It takes only a few minutes to activate your account for Season 2. Steps:

If you haven't registered, do so by follow the instructions in the top right of the website. If you are a new registrant or you played last season, you must login to your account and edit your preferences by going to My UBO -> Preferences -> Update Your Profile ->
"Are you active and ABLE TO PLAY in the next UBO season" -> YES
You MUST set this preference, and will not show up for a GM to draft if you do not, making you ineligible to play for the season otherwise.

There will be 8 teams of at least 10 players each.

League Schedule
Registration ends - 6pm Thursday, June 4**
Draft Friday evening or noon Saturday
Instant Trading on Sunday, June 7
Regular Season begins on Monday, June 8

* The pre-season will be tight but I think any good GM should be able to check in at least a few times on the weekend to 1) Set team salaries and 2) Be prepared to build their team by stealing players from other teams at 1.5 * their set salaries.

** I will be assigning GMs over this weekend hopefully, so that they will get a chance to draft their teams throughout next week. My goal is to have 5 MW GMs and 3 EU GMs based on the candidates that apply.

I have decided to change the way I incorporate other maps into the league, and have decided this season to allow teams the option of playing hockey or one other map at any time each week. The reason for this is because it will be more inclusive and will get some competitive variety into the mix. I have set the player size on each map, and games can only be played on this size game. These maps will be:

Week 1 - June 8+
Hockey only

Week 2 - June 15+
Hockey or CTF 5 vs 5

Week 3 - June 22+
Hockey or mystery map

Week 4 - June 29 - July 5 (last day)
Hockey or Minisoccer 4 vs 4

This should be fun. Please help me out by directing people to the UBO channel in BRChat and tell your squadmates to register in case they miss signups.

I will soon be announcing refs - requests to be a ref are appreciated but will not be accepted.

Players remember to change this in your PREFRENCES under MY UBO:

"Are you active and ABLE TO PLAY in the next UBO season" Put in: YES

Is there any logical reason why there would be 5 MW GMs and 3 EU GMs? Why not just have them equal? It seems completely unbalanced to have uneven numbers.

You might say the reason is that there are more MW players, but the EU community is currently a lot more active (as shown by recent MNM stats).

This isn't really a complaint, I just don't really understand your decision as it seems to unbalance a few of the key dynamics of the league.

Yes there is a logical reason for having 5 MW GMs and 3 EU GMs.

I believe that the best balance between teams will come from equal representation from their region of the world. The reason for this being that I want GMs from both servers, who know the players who play on those servers and not just the big name players, to be picking teams. This is why I won't have GMs all from one server, and more GMs than is fair to represent their server. I'm also not really sure how it is "completely unbalanced" or unbalances a few key dynamics of the league, that seems kind of like a broad statement given my intentions to actually create balance.

Although I think it's great that the UK community has gotten so active over the years, the simple truth is that there are more players from MW than EU and your example of using MNM stats does not support your argument as you say it does. All it shows is that at this time, there are more top EUs playing in mnm than top MW players - it doesn't take into account the total number of games played across players on both servers, or that not a whole lot of top mw players are playing a lot of mnm right now because it's not competitive. Every UBO and UFL that has been played has supported the proportions I mentioned, of active players representing their server.

Here's the representation of MW/EU/OTH players from signups:
OTH: 1 (1%)
EU: 22 (33%)
MW:44 (66%)

MW GM applicants: 13
UK applicants: 4

Pretty much the exact response I was expecting.

Because of this I won't bother fighting it as it seems like you wouldn't change your mind either way.

It just seems like it's going to be harder for the EU GMs as the whole league is going to be biased towards the MW server.

Maybe it's just me but despite you "knowing what I was going to say" and me apparently "not changing my mind either way", I fail to see how the league is any harder for a EU GM due to any bias towards the MW server. If you're going to position yourself as taking the high ground because you're right, I just feel like it might be a bit more constructive if you actually said what part of my logic is not correct, given that I provided a ton of good arguments and your response was basically 'I knew you'd say that, I'm not going to bother to construct an argument because you're wrong and won't change your mind, but i'll continue to make statements that have no backing anyways.' I'm not trying to pick a fight but I don't appreciate actually spending the time to reply to your post and your response to be to basically ignore what I say and call me wrong anyways.

I didn't say you were wrong, but at least you have admitted the league is biased towards the MW server.

I will make one point though - just because MW has more players does not mean those players are more skilled in any way. If you take the UCL as an example, the worst EU teams were still able to beat the worst MW teams. This shows there are a lot of players on MW that are just average and probably won't even be picked in the UBO. You have to think about the number of good players on each server (these are the players that will be participating in your league after all). I'd say it's pretty much the same at the moment. All your extra MW GM represents is a larger majority of players that won't even be good enough to play in the UBO.

If you base your league around one server then you will alienate the other. I personally lost a huge amount of interest when I found out there was going to be an extra MW GM.

I never said that there was a bias towards the mw server, please don't put words in my mouth when it suits your argument.



I'm not sure how you've supported this but this is not true.There's far more good MW players to replace any lackluster players on MW - the EU population is very active (which is really awesome!) but in total size it's smaller. Last season there were 30 EUs who played vs 80 MW players who played, definitely not even. These players were distributed over teams based on the demand for them, if they're good they'll get drafted. I don't see how having PROPORTIONAL representation for GMs has caused any fewer EU or MW players to be drafted, given that GMs from both servers need players from both servers.

It just seems like you're arguing against some kind of imagined sleight against EU when in fact i'm one of the biggest supporters of the EU community. Unless you're prepared to actually address my points like I have yours, then i'm not prepared to continue discussing this.



No kidding, which is why i'm taking steps to create a FAIR BALANCE between the servers - someone is always going to be upset no matter what I do. You may feel like EUs are somehow not getting that balance, despite the many reasons I have given to the contrary, so I can't help you out if you're determined to feel alienated by a process that best suits the community's makeup. But in reality every MW or EU player that should play, will play. Teams need to build a strong team for both servers or face harsh penalties for not playing - the players that deserve to play will get recruited, from both servers.

This has worked fine twice in the past. And for the record, at present the UK remains the only server where there are currently not enough qualified GM applicants to fill even that 3 GM requirement.

Don't worry I won't be continuing this argument. You can't tell me not to put words in your mouth and then proceed to put words in mine.


I know at least one other potential EU GM that isn't signing up because of this 5 MW 3 EU nonsense, and to be absolutely honest the idea of it doesn't appeal to me either.

Drakling: varsity2 has signed up on the website. Not a smurf name. It is me. Don't delete or ban please thanks. Looking forward to being drafted and riding the bench all season.

Do you need help with the account varsity?

If you forgot your old pw, just let me know in BR and I can help you out.

Please note that sign ups end on Thursday at 6pm EST instead of Friday.

Also, the draft will take place on Thursday at 7pm EST.

Just a reminder to those who have recently signed up and those who haven't activated their accounts:

Login. Then go to My UBO -> Preferences -> under Update Profile Click "YES" for "Are you active and ABLE TO PLAY in the next UBO season"

If you do not do this, you won't be listed in the draft pool for GMs to select you.

I think the best methods are those that have mandatory games (not as in You have to play, but You have to play on Server A and Server B)

No idea how to implement that but I just wanted to say what I think.

mandatory to have a uk lineup or something

edit: nvm he thought of everything, bitch.

Hehe

Thanks for the suggestion though, always welcome.