NSE Patch Notes 7.0

With the British University Esports Championship (BUEC) winter sign-ups in full swing, here’s a rundown of what we’ve updated for the upcoming season in the championship and on the website.

Broadly speaking, we are happy with how last year's season ran and will only be making small changes to most tournaments. Areas we are focusing on is improving playoff brackets, map pool updates and women's tournaments more generally.

Playoff Brackets

In previous years, we have always designed tournaments with the goal that all teams get games every week. This means when teams can no longer win the tournament they would still get final placement games instead. For most teams this has worked well but we found that in some low stakes playoff matches teams would not show up for the final game. Where possible we have identified these games and removed them from the tournament. 

Tournament Specific

CS2

• There will be no demotion between playoff divisions.
• We are removing some final placement games from Division 2 and 3. Teams in the playoffs will be eliminated from the playoffs after 2 losses.
• Teams in playoff divisions will forfeit remaining games if they do not show up for a match without giving prior notice.
• Rank form now requests faceit rank in addition to premier

Dota 2

We will no longer be running an official dota 2 season. There will instead be a community run league open to alumni and current players. Details TBC

League of Legends

• There will be no demotion between playoff divisions.
• Division 2 and 3 games in Week 7 games changed to bo3
• Added extra bo3 playoff game for Division 2 and 3 finals and 3rd/4th match in week 8

Overwatch

• Added Clash modes and maps to the pool.
• Removed bo3 map rotation. Teams will now pick the next mode and map in games. Further information is on the rules tab of the signup page.
• Updated Map Pool
  • Clash: Hanaoka, Throne of Anubi
  • Control: Ilios, Lijiang Tower, Nepal
  • Escort: Junkertown, Rialto, Watchpoint: Gibraltar
  • Flashpoint: New Junk City, Suravasa​
  • Hybrid: Blizzard World, King's Row, Midtown
  • Push: Esperança, New Queen Street, Runasapi
• Potential increased number of bo5s in Division 1 pending player feedback.
• Skins are now enabled.

Rainbow 6 Siege

• Format unchanged (Playoff division sizes will scale with signups)
• We plan on hosting a player feedback session on MOSS Penalties. Pending player input we may be increasing random checks on division 1 teams and updating penalties for missing files.

Rocket League

We are removing regional splits and instead introducing a 3 division structure. The top division will run similar to the previous seasons National league. Lower divisions will run more similarly to previous regional divisions. This change is to optimise matchmaking for lower ranked teams. Previously lowest ranked teams would not get to play as many teams of similar skill due to being in different regions.

• North and South teams will no longer be split into multiple tournaments.
• National League to be renamed to Division 1, with an additional 32 team league being created named Division 2.
• Stage 1 will be a qualifier with all teams, with the top 32 teams qualifying for Division 1, the next 32 teams qualifying for Division 2. All other teams will play in a swiss league.
• Division 1 structure will be the same as the old National League, with it splitting into Upper and Lower Division 1 after a week.
• Division 1 demoted teams will be replaced by top Division 2 teams. Teams in Division 2 can be demoted and replaced by top swiss teams.

Splat 3

• Secondary abilities are now allowed.
• Stage 1 is now 3 weeks long instead of 4 weeks.
• The top 12 teams will qualify for Division 1, with the top 4 teams having a bye in the first round.

Smash

• No changes to the main season

VALORANT

• Removing final week games for teams in  9-16th Playoff matches.

Women and Non Binary Events

Major Changes

• Implemented a new two university roster rule.
• More information available about how the number of rounds scales with signups. Full information can be found on schedule pages.
• Adding tiebreak games to replace OMWP as tiebreak where possible.

Generally for University esports we have found the best way to grow the community has been to link teams to societies and support society growth. Originally we applied this logic to womens esports as well. However, the common piece of feedback we got was societies would try to form teams and only get 3-4 players. Those players would then leave soc without taking part in any events and societies struggled to reach a critical mass of players to create a women's community.

Last year we tried letting players sign up solo or with partial teams to be automatically assigned teammates by NSE staff. In theory this solved the problem, but very few players signed up. Some players gave the feedback of not wanting to be automatically assigned to teams with people they didn't know or couldn’t pick for themselves. Another piece of feedback we got was that the few teams that did form were "super teams" made of all star players so were much stronger than uni teams.

After discussing various options we decided to trial a two-university approach this year for a few reasons

1. It creates an option for players without a full team to play.
2. As only 2 universities per team we hope that preserves university identity so societies are more likely to support them directly.

Limiting to 2 universities lets players pick teammates whilst still putting some restrictions to stop best 5 players creating a all star team

Sign-ups are open now for BUEC Winter 2024, don’t miss out!

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