It's actually been fully functional for a long while, we just don't have any EU staff willing to monitor the site.

fREAKAZOiD is out of Cloud9, adreN standing in: http://cloud9.gg/news/freakazoid-departs-starting-roster

Apologies, that was due to an update to our flagging system. You should be good to go now.

Please no, I received enough heartbreak when I received this email from Valve:

http://i.imgur.com/ER1KQVC.png

Due to the overwhelming demand we've seen, we've brought up another game server for PugChamp AU. Enjoy!

I'm proud to announce that with the help of a few friends in Australia, we now have PugChamp AU up and running!

Hey all, we've been making a few changes over the past few days and feel now is a good time to share them. This is in addition to the minor fixes and adjustments we're constantly making.

First of all, we performed a soft reset of player rating deviations yesterday, and plan to do so at the beginning of each month. This will make ratings more volatile and allow them to settle into a different position over the month.

Second, and more importantly, we've performed a limited alpha test of our new mix system MixChamp. With that test seeming to work well, we're ready to bring it into a full public alpha. This system, contrasted with PugChamp, uses a balancing algorithm based on a hidden rating system to select teams instead of the draft by captains in the normal system. It will have bugs and issues as it's fairly new and untested, but it uses the same software base so hopefully the troubles will be limited to the new functionality added. We're excited to be making this available as an option going forward and hope that you all will find it useful.

(... surely the fourth time's the charm, right?)

I'm tentatively looking for a team for Season 22. Not completely sure whether I'll be able to play given that the dates aren't announced yet and the summer's not entirely clear yet, but I do want to play as it's most likely the last season before 2017.

My only major experience was the entirety of Season 18 where I led a team (playing medic) in Open. I've only played very occasionally after that season ended, though I've been becoming infamous in other activities.

I won't be fully available over the next couple of months as the semester wraps up and I transition into the summer, and I won't commit to anything until I know what I'm in for this summer, but other than that feel free to hit me up.

I am acutely aware of the problems that come as part of having captain restrictions - it's a delicate balancing act between trying to ensure the best games and making the site as accessible as possible.

We have tried to ease the requirements for captaining by various methods, like giving added weight to captains shown to be more successful and showing stats on the draft page to assist captains, but there just hasn't been any substitute yet for ensuring a captain knows the community by requiring them to play a few games before they captain.

However, we are working towards a new system that will automatically draft games when enough players are available as an alternative to the current system requiring captains. I hope to have something to announce about that soon.

The head-to-head rules were added in recent seasons, so they should be accurate, and since there are only two teams involved in this tiebreaker, with one match between the two, there's no reason it shouldn't be applied.

Last season, all teams in the tiebreaker did not play each other, so head-to-head couldn't be applied.

It's pretty much guaranteed to not happen soon as the ESL Pro League regular season ends in late April. They also have to do LAN finals for both the Pro League and Premier, both of which haven't been announced yet (though Pro League was said to be sometime in May). As a result, it's likely that the next season will begin in June if not July.

They'll probably announce dates while the season is wrapping up and open up registration for the next season then, though there's no certain way to know for sure. The most up-to-date information is on ESEA's front page as always.

In the interests of being transparent, I'll lay out some of the recent changes we've made with regards to ratings and rankings and the background behind them. We have been discussing this within the admin team for some time (as Skye posted above) and had made it available to Pro players in the Discord for discussion.

To summarize the issue, we had noticed a phenomenon where some players were getting much higher ratings than players who were considered much better than them. The issue is due to how the rating system is being applied: in a normal matchmaking system, players would be matched by their ratings, so they would quickly be adjusted to their correct rating. However, with captains picking teams without consideration to rating, it's entirely possible for groups of players to never mix, making ratings only applicable in the context of that group. That appears to be happening here with different levels of games being played. (This is a fundamental problem that will happen no matter what rating system is applied, as long as players with similar ratings aren't ever guaranteed to face each other.)

In light of this, we decided to boost the initial ratings of Invite players when they entered the system. This is only a one-time adjustment when an Invite player enters the system - after that, their ratings will be adjusted using the same processes as any other player. It's important to note that our rating system uses both a mean and deviation to represent a range for the player's "true" rating, and our adjustment simply has the effect of increasing the starting lower bound (so a regular player's rating is somewhere between 0 and 3000 to start, while an Invite player's is between 1200 and 3000 with the adjustment).

As a result, games with these players will be more highly-rated, and in theory a regular player in a high-level game will tend to gain more rating when winning and lose less when losing than when playing a lower-level game. Will this adjustment solve the problem of ratings being inaccurate? To be honest, I'm not sure there is a way to completely solve the problem, and we don't have a concrete way of figuring out whether this solution will work before seeing it live. In theory, though, it should work well enough for ratings to be generally more accurate.

It's also crucial to note the purpose of ratings: they serve as a general indicator of skill, and as a result we'd like to utilize them as one of the factors when attempting to promote players to the upcoming Pro League. As a result, we are not as concerned with the ratings of Invite players - while we'd like to get everyone's rating as accurate as possible, it's fine if their ratings in particular are a little less accurate as they have automatic qualification to the Pro League regardless, and we expect that they will spend more of their time playing the higher-skilled games there. When they do play in the Open system, however, players playing against them need to gain more rating when playing against them, as we want to promote the most competitive players.

In light of the issues that we've found with the rating system in the alpha, we are still evaluating their effects on the Pro League, especially the effects on competition within and the effects on promotion from the Open system, as well as considering possible adjustments. Possible ideas we have thrown around internally are hiding ratings for the Pro League and/or using a simpler system like the one ESEA just unveiled for its new Rank S system, but we are still very much open to new suggestions. As a result, we have been inviting Pro players to the Discord to participate in these discussions so that we can make the Pro League as competitive and enjoyable as possible for these players.

That should cover all of the recent changes and considerations with regards to rating. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to tell us here, in an email, in a Twitter DM, or in the Discord. Thanks again for your support.

We didn't direct people to the new site because the site has no captain restrictions right now, which allows anyone and everyone to captain. After seeing the problems in the early stages of alpha, we wanted to run a closed beta to help get enough people with games played so that we could open up to the public with a captain restriction.

Hey all,

It seems like we're continually delaying it, but the beta for PugChamp is right around the corner - everything's freshly set up thanks to our many supporters and sponsors! Right now, we are currently discussing solutions to the issues we've spotted in beta, particularly those that will affect the Pro League as it launches and integrates into the overall hierarchy.

To that end, we'd like to gather people into a Discord where it's easier to discuss these types of issues and more. If you're interested, you can use this invite link to join: https://discord.gg/0toxQuQd0nLHy3NY

We hope that everyone's been enjoying the new betas that have popped up this weekend and are excited to bring out our own very soon. Thanks to everyone for your support, and happy gaming!

It actually started with top players receiving them last year to distribute to EU/NA. Later, community/self-made item owners were granted access to the beta (but did NOT receive a beta pass), and a few others received their own passes (like mapmakers). Behind-the-scenes contributors contacted Valve and received a bunch that were given out, as did other groups like the Asian and Australian competitive communities and newbie mix coaches.

Recently Valve redid the entire system, where all existing beta passes were turned to vintage, and any beta pass in existence would start generating invites to be given out. Everyone with a pass received 7 to start with, and they've continued to generate more since. It seems like any pass (vintage or not) will generate new invites, so every wave multiplies the number of passes in existence.