The Trials and Tabulations of Creating an Esports Team

Warwick Esports have earned themselves a reputation as a dominant force in the UK university esports scene.
A lot of people put this down to work ethic, raw skill and good coaching/management, but at the end of the day, it all starts with choosing the right players to make the perfect team. The question is, how exactly do you do that?

🤠Howdy🤠and welcome to week 0 of the Warwick Esports Weekly Read. Each week, we’ll explore an esports related topic in a short 5 min read, as well as look forward towards exciting events on the horizon. If you have a topic you want to see, feel free to DM our lead writer on discord @CheeseLordP#7864

Choices, choices, choices…

Historically, there is no shortage of talent to pick from at Warwick and this year is no different. As we mentioned in last week’s weekly read, this year has seen a record number of players signing up, so deciding who to pick has been all the more challenging.

Whilst each game requires its own team-choosing process, there is a common theme at play: Trials and Tabulations.

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Let's start with the tabulations.

Game coordinators start the search for the next gaming prodigy by sending off announcements for teams, making players fill out a form if they are interested.

What can be asked in these forms varies a lot game to game.

Some games only want to know what your in-game matchmaking rank is, and nothing else.

Other games opt for a more data-heavy approach and collect large sums of information on each player, ranging from what roles/heroes they can play to how competitive they consider themselves as a player and what they want out of joining a team.

If we look at a game like Overwatch, much more information is needed at the tabulation stage.

This is because players can be put into different roles, to varying levels of effectiveness, and building a complete picture through trials would quite literally take days' worth of gameplay.

Show me what you got

So you may be thinking, “OK all that information seems good, but surely you can't just make teams based off of stats”. You’d be right and that’s where team trials/tryouts come in to play.

Game coordinators will pick a day and make all of their players show up to play in balanced teams, to gauge the relative skills of each individual.

This is where the coaches get to look for skill sets that don’t just show up on paper, like communication and teamplay, as well as how well certain players synergise.

As a rule of thumb, the more information that’s gathered at the tabulation stage, the fewer matches you’ll need to organise in the trials stage, and vice versa.

One of the game coordinator’s most important jobs is trying to find the right balance of practicality and fairness.

If we looked again at Overwatch, because of all of the information gathered in tabulation, coaches only have to run a very limited number of targeted trial matches, looking at very specific players and roles, to put finishing touches on teams.

At the other end of the spectrum is Rocket League.

Because team sizes are so small (3), and there are no set ‘roles’ or ‘positions’, the selection process is very trials-dependent.

With a total of 35 signups, 24 of whom played in trials, and only equipped with a list of each player’s rank, there were many logistical hurdles to overcome.

A list of willing coaches and ex-players was created as a ‘buffer’, in case certain players couldn’t make it to trials, or just didn’t show up.

But even with this safety net, figuring out how to fairly split the players into teams would have still been an arduous task, were it not for some spreadsheet magic.

A cleverly written excel algorithm split the players into four balanced groups of six. Then, the players within each group played six matches, with the algorithm rebalancing every two games.

At this halfway mark, coaches looked at the performances of each player, and updated their rankings. Then, the whole process was repeated for another 6 matches.

After a total of 72 individual matches played, players were given post-match interviews on who they enjoyed playing with most/least, completing the process.

So…

If you went through the trials process this year, we hope this has given you some insight into the behind the scenes workings on making teams, and that you see that we try and make the whole process as fair and accessible as possible.

This may explain, at least in part, why we continue to produce teams that not only dominate, but also have fun, and that feel that their time playing for us is time well spent.

If you haven’t joined a team yet, you can still sign up for casual teams. Also, don’t be afraid of just sending a message to a game coordinator and asking if there are any spots open!

As usual, if you have a topic you’d like to see talked about, or just have an idea you’d like to share, feel free to get in touch.

Written by Alex “CheeseLord” Petropoulos (Twitter @AltPet | Discord @CheeseLordP#7864)