A few weeks have passed now since the rebirth of invitegathers, and as promised people were allowed to trial. There was a large interest and many applicants, of which many passed the bar of the trial. But don't use that as an excuse to slack off, being a trial gave you a certain leeway, more will be demanded as a regular member.
The next wave of trials will begin soon after discussion with my moderators, once again: Anyone is allowed to trial, but trials will only be accepted if they have a good potential. Aka, put some effort into it if you want to join. Anyone that did not pass has been removed, and are allowed to re-apply to prove themselves once more.
Wob, when a player is put on trial it's marked on the Invite Gathers team page as "Trial Member." After reviewing the trial members your either removed from the team or that "Trial Member" tag is removed, meaning your in.
Handschu, that's kind of what a trial membership is. If you don't use it you lose it. Your on trial to prove you belong, and if you choose not to play we will remove you so other people can have the opportunity. We always remove people for a reason but we're not in the habbit of tracking down every person and explaining every time. If they want to contact us we will tell them why, but it's mostly come down to not active or no quite there (bad communication, listening, teamwork, or just plain slow overall)
Afterall this whole feature is meant to be for relatively high skill games. The purpose of invite gathers is not to be a vip meeting point for cool friends, it's for high skill players who don't want to be stuck teaching people about their mistakes nonstop.
Would be nice if you're still teaching people somehow (with writing tutorials/making videos giving people drills helping them somehow to get to your "invite gather level") or there's a chance you're running out of players someday in the future for the invite gathers.
but i would judge all people the same and not the trial people in a special way. there are a lot of "non active members" in the invitegathers who never played a gather for years but never get kicked. there should be some cleaning too in my opinion. and inactive trials should only be kicked when they are not known to the community. a trial who played seasons, pcws and is known in the community is not a real trial member imo.
somebody who played high level div1 (or prem in some cases), and somebody being trialed who has never shouldn't be treated equally because they aren't more often than not. returning players retain their game sense and decision making more or less, they just need to get their mechanics back. people with good game sense and decision making but rusty mechanics are so, so much more enjoyable to play with than the opposite (imo at least)
yeah I'm sure some active, well-known, div2 pub-hero that's finished a season or two along with scrims is of high value to the invite gather group. Just because you've played for a long time doesn't mean you're good, don't be delusional.
did not know invite gather is all about being good....... i thought it is about playing with people who know basics and not to teach every round. but anyway. it was just a suggestion.
It originally started as "Goldens Gather Group" which was just a selected few in a steam group which consisted of mostly premium div players. Reason being people grew old of the frequent cancer and skill difference in regular gathers. I don't know how or when it developed into "Invite Gathers" since I wasn't around, but I can confidently say that group has already been very lenient towards accepting new players, a bit too much imho.
acutally medi had the idea of tier'd gather system like 2 years ago. i think people wanted like a prem div gather for a while, and when nsl didn't implement it people turned to bjfg and golden gather groups
There has always been a Invite gather, even in the old days there were invite gathers. The difference is that it got more visible when Golden made the ,,Golden gather group" with an ensl channel and then on the gather page. Every single competitive game has a invite gather, generally people msg each other on steam/discord/other media and gather until they have enough for a pug match. Since most top level players generally have really high standards even when they play casually they find other players on similar level to play with, otherwise it gets quickly frustrating and boring for them.
The only difference right now is the visibility, everyone can see that it's happening. The good news is that you have a chance to trial and get invited to it, however you actually have to put in the work.
For every person that complains that it can't play the invite gather I have this answer: Put in the work, practise, get better and proof your worth! Show them you are good enough! Show them you that you really care!
For the people mentioning lack of players for normal gathers = There is clear need to recruit new people into the ENSL and someone needs to take on that work. Time to step up!
The only good argument I have seen is that it might be harder for players to grow when more experience players are not playing with them. If they take some time and really watch the invite gather games and ask the more experienced players for assistance you can get all the information you need to improve to the required level. Most players in ns2 are very helpful when people come and ask for assistance and they are very accessible.
To go off what Grissi wrote, I think what helps players improve is when better teams/players watch a team play and comment on what the team could do better. I know people that helped me, they took the time to really go in depth on how to think as marines or how to work as a team. Stuff I wouldn't have thought about as quickly, or wouldn't have been as clear without a top level player explaining it.
I think others have said, you can improve at ns2, but seems to help when it's a 1 on 1 conversation. Or a good player talking to a small group when watching footage or training. Some people can watch the hera marine video and probably learn a lot from it. Other people are probably going to have to be in the moment or watch how they move/do things and learn that way.
The way to get better is to internalize why you were successful or not successful and learn from it over and over again till it comes naturally. But if you don't have the movements of the game down, you can't skillfully play with the best players in the game. So you have to take the time to really learn all the movements, and when to do different things. Then you can try to outsmart a good player/team. When you aren't good enough, you feel like they always have the advantage on you. It's fun when it comes down to who makes the better play.
