We are happy to announce BSL Season 5 starting October 2, 2018.
And we have some more great news! Blizzard is officially sponsoring the prize pool of Season 5 and 6. Furthermore, they are also financially supporting us to create our official webpage.
Yes, you heard that right! We can already confirm TWO more seasons of the Bombastic StarLeague! So keep practicing!
A few words about BSL
The goal of the Bombastic StarLeague is to focus on the development of players outside of South Korea. On top of the BSL main tournament, we will continue to host a series of smaller events:
BSL Faction Wars
BSL Continental Wars, February with BSL
and many more great events!
As you probably know, we are not only focusing on the very best players, but also aiming for top amateur players, we want to encourage new players to join the competition. That's why Season 5 will keep the same format, with 2 divisions: BSL ProLeague and BSL ChoboLeague.
How can I start playing?
Make your own account with the BSL5-Tag on any Gateway. For example: BSL5-Hatchet, BSL5-HaN, BSL5-ZZZero, BSL5-Dandy, etc..
Ro64 Group Stage – Eight groups with eight players each, double-elimination, best-of-one. Top 2 of each group advance to the Ro16.
Ro16 Group Stage – Four groups with four players each, double-elimination, best-of-three. Top 2 of each group advance to the Ro8.
Ro8 and onwards – Single-elimination bracket, best-of-five.
Grand finals – Best-of-seven.
Map pool to be announced [5 maps from ladder, 2 new ones, 2 old ones].
All matches during the group stages are Bo3. Ro8 matches and onwards are Bo5. Grand Finals are Bo7. As a map pool, we will use 9 maps. As there are 9 maps in the map pool, 6 maps need to be eliminated for a Bo3, 4 maps for Bo5 and 2 maps for Bo7. All vetoes and map picks need to be made before the matches. The player with the higher ladder stage ranking can decide if they want to veto first or second. The order for vetoes is ABABAB ABC for Bo3, ABAB ABABC for Bo5 and AB ABABABC for Bo7.
Example of vetoes for the Bo3 match:
Player A vetoes a map
Player B vetoes a map
Player A vetoes a map
Player B vetoes a map
Player A vetoes a map
Player B vetoes a map
Player A vetoes a map
Player A picks the first map
Player B picks the second map
The remaining map will be played in the decider match
Once all vetoes and map picks are done, you can start the matches!
The BSL5 Proleague prize pool of $1,000 USD is sponsored by Blizzard and will be distributed as follows:
1st place - $400
2nd place - $250
3rd place - $150
4th place - $100
5th-8th place - $25
We also got over $1000 USD donations for BSL5 prize pool from you guys. After talking to the donators, we have decided to use the prize money for additional tournaments during the ladder stage, and many other tournaments and showmatches. For example: Top 4 ladder players showmatch, Top 16/32 players in BSL-ladder tournaments, King of the Hill matches and more!
1. The tournament is residency locked
The goal of the Bombastic StarLeague is to focus on the development of players outside of Korea. Therefore, only players that are living outside of South Korea can participate in this tournament
2. Regular match rules
Players must be online and available on Battle.net channel Op BSL (Europe) 15 minutes before their scheduled match. Secondary channel of communication is BSL Open Discord server.
15 minutes after scheduled time, if one of the players not responding, his opponent may claim a technical win for one game.
15 minutes after that he can claim a win for the whole series.
3. Playing matches before the schedule
Every match prior to the Elimination Stage can be played ahead of schedule if both players agree.
Contact your opponent and set up the date to play. We strongly suggest using BSL Open Discord for this so admins can keep track of things.
On the selected day, play your match. Apply the same rules as for a regular match - use Op BSL and Discord to communicate.
If both players were unable to play on their selected date/time or weren't able to set one up, match should be played as it was scheduled.
It is not allowed to livestream your games or announce the result if you are playing your match earlier.
Winner of the match must upload the replays.
4. Latency
Default Turn Rate setting is DTR. If both players agree, Turn Rate setting can be changed.
5. Disconnects
If one of the players gets disconnected from the game before the 2-minute mark, the game must be replayed. If one of the players had an advantage after the 2 minute mark, the decision is up to the admin.
6. Casting the game
Everyone should allow ZZZero or another official caster to join the game for broadcast.
7. Everyone must join the BSL Official Discord channel
1. You should play ladder becouse we will have tournaments for TOP8/16 players at "current stage" of the ladder. 2. You should play ladder becouse players higher in ladder stage will have better position during map vetos - look at the rules of map vetos.
Very well deserved Zero, hope you guys find some great casters and varity (Zero, BisuD, Rapid, Schamtoo, FlaShFTW etc etc, maybe even grape-toss himself) for the many streams ahead!
I just want to say to all the people participating in this tournament:
You are the elite of competitive gamers. Not because you are the smartest and most talented people in gaming overall, but because you have made a choice that what you want to do with your life is to play the hardest game alive and with it receive next to no monetary and public attention in return. But you have made a choice and you are sticking with it. That's the secret to life right there. Because only through making a dedicated choice can you discover the true meaning of anything. Let others chase fame and one day realize that what they got is a house of cards. Meanwhile you are patiently laying hard brick after hard brick to build a structure that will weather the times and everything else they can throw at it. They will try and tempt you with their constructed ideals, but you will position your mind to not need anything of what they have to offer. Why, because you're a levitating super human warrior ninja dragon slayer ass kicking BW PLAYER 4 LIFE CAN I GET AN AMEN!??!
On October 02 2018 03:44 tanngard wrote: I just want to say to all the people participating in this tournament:
You are the elite of competitive gamers. Not because you are the smartest and most talented people in gaming overall, but because you have made a choice that what you want to do with your life is to play the hardest game alive and with it receive next to no monetary and public attention in return. But you have made a choice and you are sticking with it. That's the secret to life right there. Because only through making a dedicated choice can you discover the true meaning of anything. Let others chase fame and one day realize that what they got is a house of cards. Meanwhile you are patiently laying hard brick after hard brick to build a structure that will weather the times and everything else they can throw at it. They will try and tempt you with their constructed ideals, but you will position your mind to not need anything of what they have to offer. Why, because you're a levitating super human warrior ninja dragon slayer ass kicking BW PLAYER 4 LIFE CAN I GET AN AMEN!??!
Answering some popular questions regarding region lock:
Player1 is allowed to participate in BSL right? He lives in london but is korean just as Player2 he's also korean but living in germany Player3 tho is korean living in korea so he wont be allowed in ... right?
Are you guys going to allow proxying to the korean server?
We will check residency based on country data provided by your bnet accounts (the flags next to your nicknames). For every account with KR flag we will ask you to confirm your residency. So Players 1 and 2 can advance to the main stage, and Player3 can't. Same rule applies to the proxying. We can't stop you from doing this, and won't ban you from the tournament if system thinks you're Korean while you aren't Korean.
On October 02 2018 03:44 tanngard wrote: I just want to say to all the people participating in this tournament:
You are the elite of competitive gamers. Not because you are the smartest and most talented people in gaming overall, but because you have made a choice that what you want to do with your life is to play the hardest game alive and with it receive next to no monetary and public attention in return. But you have made a choice and you are sticking with it. That's the secret to life right there. Because only through making a dedicated choice can you discover the true meaning of anything. Let others chase fame and one day realize that what they got is a house of cards. Meanwhile you are patiently laying hard brick after hard brick to build a structure that will weather the times and everything else they can throw at it. They will try and tempt you with their constructed ideals, but you will position your mind to not need anything of what they have to offer. Why, because you're a levitating super human warrior ninja dragon slayer ass kicking BW PLAYER 4 LIFE CAN I GET AN AMEN!??!
Player1 is allowed to participate in BSL right? He lives in london but is korean just as Player2 he's also korean but living in germany Player3 tho is korean living in korea so he wont be allowed in ... right?
Are you guys going to allow proxying to the korean server?
We will check residency based on country data provided by your bnet accounts (the flags next to your nicknames). For every account with KR flag we will ask you to confirm your residency. So Players 1 and 2 can advance to the main stage, and Player3 can't. Same rule applies to the proxying. We can't stop you from doing this, and won't ban you from the tournament if system thinks you're Korean while you aren't Korean.
Just for clarification, you mean that I can go and play on Asia server using VPN and I'll be fine? My location is LTU under my profile so I guess I'm fine playing on Asia server it's not a big deal or?
He took an advantage from his position as TL staff. He knew about the announcement beforehand. I'm not happy about it, but I hope ladder reset will equal the chances more or less.
Okey so everything looks set for a ladder reset, but when are blizzard going to announce it? I saw this morning that the ladder standings was removed and the old standings was shown instead. Just feels so weird that there havent been a developer update or anything about it.
The countdown timer on the BSL webbsite says 31 days left, but nowhere on the front page does it say "starts in 10hours", so maybe that's the confusion, for those lazy asses who havent read the whole rule section! xD
Anyways, looking forward to the start of BSL today! <3 HYPE IS REAL!
Actually about 30%+ of my games without VPN are vs Kors, it's a bit weird because i get TR16 vs them whereas when i face a European i always get at least TR20/TR24 (TR24 mostly). It's odd because if a Korean and European player search at the same time i'll always end up hitting the Kor player over the EU player (obviously only when there's no other NA player Q'ing, which surprisingly happens very frequently).
For some reason Blizz's matchmaking algorithm prioritizes Koreans over Europeans for NA players, i live in the East coast so i dunno about West coasters. It's not that i don't like playing vs Kors, i do but a lot of the time they end up cheesing u because the games are TR16.. which becomes tiresome after a while. Out of 100 games ill hit a EU player maybe 1 or 2 times, would be nice to see that number go up a bit.
But at the end of the day i can just play vs EU players via VPN if i wanted to (for something like the BSL) so it's not a huge deal. That said i wonder how this will affect the final rankings because i'm pretty sure EU players are gonna be ranking each other up (and they have a way bigger player pool) whereas NA players are gonna be hitting Koreans way more frequently.
He probably uses a VPN to Korea and logs in to Asia server, although login into Asia server doesn't make a difference, the VPN makes all the difference.
Dear 2Pacalypse-, dear ZZZero, can you please PM me on how you were able to acquire sponsorship from Blizzard? Whom at Blizzard can I contact on this matter? Thank you. I've also sent you a PM.
On October 02 2018 17:27 TT1 wrote: Actually about 30%+ of my games without VPN are vs Kors, it's a bit weird because i get TR16 vs them whereas when i face a European i always get at least TR20/TR24 (TR24 mostly). It's odd because if a Korean and European player search at the same time i'll always end up hitting the Kor player over the EU player (obviously only when there's no other NA player Q'ing, which surprisingly happens very frequently).
For some reason Blizz's matchmaking algorithm prioritizes Koreans over Europeans for NA players, i live in the East coast so i dunno about West coasters. It's not that i don't like playing vs Kors, i do but a lot of the time they end up cheesing u because the games are TR16.. which becomes tiresome after a while. Out of 100 games ill hit a EU player maybe 1 or 2 times, would be nice to see that number go up a bit.
But at the end of the day i can just play vs EU players via VPN if i wanted to (for something like the BSL) so it's not a huge deal. That said i wonder how this will affect the final rankings because i'm pretty sure EU players are gonna be ranking each other up (and they have a way bigger player pool) whereas NA players are gonna be hitting Koreans way more frequently.
Yeah, that's actually really weird but I believe good practice wise?
As for BSL, I think playing on Korean/Asian server (what I plan to do) is a better advantage since you have shorter queue time which equals to more games you can play in shorter amount of time (we have 1 month). In EU server once you reach 2k MMR it might get quite hard sometimes to find a game fast enough, without waiting 5++ minutes. Even if you do find a game you might end up playing playing someone 300 MMR less than you and receiving something like 2points per victory which is not so fun. Of course, when BSL comes to action, hopefully even more people will be playing and it might not be an issue anymore! Ayyy!
On October 02 2018 17:27 TT1 wrote: Actually about 30%+ of my games without VPN are vs Kors, it's a bit weird because i get TR16 vs them whereas when i face a European i always get at least TR20/TR24 (TR24 mostly). It's odd because if a Korean and European player search at the same time i'll always end up hitting the Kor player over the EU player (obviously only when there's no other NA player Q'ing, which surprisingly happens very frequently).
For some reason Blizz's matchmaking algorithm prioritizes Koreans over Europeans for NA players, i live in the East coast so i dunno about West coasters. It's not that i don't like playing vs Kors, i do but a lot of the time they end up cheesing u because the games are TR16.. which becomes tiresome after a while. Out of 100 games ill hit a EU player maybe 1 or 2 times, would be nice to see that number go up a bit.
But at the end of the day i can just play vs EU players via VPN if i wanted to (for something like the BSL) so it's not a huge deal. That said i wonder how this will affect the final rankings because i'm pretty sure EU players are gonna be ranking each other up (and they have a way bigger player pool) whereas NA players are gonna be hitting Koreans way more frequently.
Yeah, that's actually really weird but I believe good practice wise?
As for BSL, I think playing on Korean/Asian server (what I plan to do) is a better advantage since you have shorter queue time which equals to more games you can play in shorter amount of time (we have 1 month). In EU server once you reach 2k MMR it might get quite hard sometimes to find a game fast enough, without waiting 5++ minutes. Even if you do find a game you might end up playing playing someone 300 MMR less than you and receiving something like 2points per victory which is not so fun. Of course, when BSL comes to action, hopefully even more people will be playing and it might not be an issue anymore! Ayyy!
It's not great practice when you're playing vs early game allins most of the time (with lag), ideally it would be cool if the matchmaking prioritized NA vs EU matchups more often (the player pool expands and the latency is actually playable). If i really wanted to play vs Kors i could just do so on a VPN, it takes 2 secs to run it.
That said i'm not sure what they're gonna do with the matchmaking system once they release the 2v2 ladder. Playing games with 2 foreigners vs 2 koreans is impossible right now and i don't think the EU + NA player base is big enough to support a 2v2 ladder. Anyways i'm getting ahead of myself, that's a diff matter to discuss further down the line :D.
My matchmaking on NA west coast is 75% Koreans and 25% NA without VPN. I don't think I ever ran into anyone from EU, probably ever. Might be due to the proximity of west coast to Korea or something?
Either way, hyped for BSL. Thanks ZZZero and all who are helping to coordinate!
Player1 is allowed to participate in BSL right? He lives in london but is korean just as Player2 he's also korean but living in germany Player3 tho is korean living in korea so he wont be allowed in ... right?
Are you guys going to allow proxying to the korean server?
We will check residency based on country data provided by your bnet accounts (the flags next to your nicknames). For every account with KR flag we will ask you to confirm your residency. So Players 1 and 2 can advance to the main stage, and Player3 can't. Same rule applies to the proxying. We can't stop you from doing this, and won't ban you from the tournament if system thinks you're Korean while you aren't Korean.
On October 03 2018 02:41 Jaeyun wrote: My matchmaking on NA west coast is 75% Koreans and 25% NA without VPN. I don't think I ever ran into anyone from EU, probably ever. Might be due to the proximity of west coast to Korea or something?
Either way, hyped for BSL. Thanks ZZZero and all who are helping to coordinate!
unless you're on the east coast, connections to EU are pretty ass for NA.
How can u start playing: 1. Make your own account with the BSL5-Tag on any Gateway. For example: BSL5-Jealous 2. Join our website at the following URL: https://bombasticstarleague.com Create an account and add yourself to the rankings [It will be displayed after 1 game played] 3. Start playing ranked games.
Boy's and Girl's - I hope we answered all your questions via discord / PM's or other way of communication. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask here.
How can u start playing: 1. Make your own account with the BSL5-Tag on any Gateway. For example: BSL5-Jealous 2. Join our website at the following URL: https://bombasticstarleague.com Create an account and add yourself to the rankings [It will be displayed after 1 game played] 3. Start playing ranked games.
Boy's and Girl's - I hope we answered all your questions via discord / PM's or other way of communication. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask here.
Hey, thanks for reaching out to me personally, but I figured it out from the main post in the thread and am already playing Thank you ZZZero for your continued contributions and for your help. I was just saying that I realized only when I logged onto my BSL name from February that I saw other people with BSL5- in their name and I was like "Oh crap!" haha. Cheers! BSL GOGOGO!
So this is probably nitpicking, BUT, since Blizzard was REALLY late at resetting the season (I think it happened at like 9pm ET ... I could be wrong, but I recall it was late and the day was basically over ... and that means for EU it was definitely +1 day late)
So to account for this, was the ladder phase extended by +1 day?
ZZZero is awesome, he puts so much work, effort, and passion into this. He started this league from nothing and looks at it now, Blizzard is sponsoring it.
On October 05 2018 03:05 ProtossGG wrote: So this is probably nitpicking, BUT, since Blizzard was REALLY late at resetting the season (I think it happened at like 9pm ET ... I could be wrong, but I recall it was late and the day was basically over ... and that means for EU it was definitely +1 day late)
So to account for this, was the ladder phase extended by +1 day?
On October 05 2018 03:05 ProtossGG wrote: So this is probably nitpicking, BUT, since Blizzard was REALLY late at resetting the season (I think it happened at like 9pm ET ... I could be wrong, but I recall it was late and the day was basically over ... and that means for EU it was definitely +1 day late)
So to account for this, was the ladder phase extended by +1 day?
Does it really matter if the season are 30 or 31 days ?
On October 03 2018 02:41 Jaeyun wrote: My matchmaking on NA west coast is 75% Koreans and 25% NA without VPN. I don't think I ever ran into anyone from EU, probably ever. Might be due to the proximity of west coast to Korea or something?
Either way, hyped for BSL. Thanks ZZZero and all who are helping to coordinate!
unless you're on the east coast, connections to EU are pretty ass for NA.
Well I guess with how high the standard of "playable" has become that's true. I can get ~160 ms ping to west coast depending on the server, which sure would be ok to me, but in the current age of 24 TR would probably be pretty unacceptable to most.
KEEP IN MIND: If players seeded from BSL Season 4 - [Dandy, KogeT, eOnzErg, Dewalt, KuH, Favorit, Kingdom, Splax] will be in TOP20 at the end of BSL5 ladder stage, then players from lower spots will qualify.
BSL5 is going really well with over 200 players already registered and played their games.
Meanwhile, we noticed unusual activity from the current #1 ranked TestID. We investigated this account's stats and it revealed that every single of TestID's games lasted no longer than 15 seconds. Moreover, all his ladder wins came from only two opponents, which accounts can't be viewed and probably were deleted. The only TestID's loss came from third opponent and his account can be accessed. With that said, we assume that fairness of TestID matchmaked stats is questionable and we temporary remove this account from competition. We are asking owner of TestID account to contact BSL administration via Discord or email admin@bombasticstarleague.com and clarify this situation.
As for the account BSL5-Jerry-iRk which is considered Korean by battle.net service, we didn't notice anything suspicious and this player is eligible to play BSL5 Ladder Stage. However our policy is to focus on the development of talent of players outside of Korea. Therefore it can be advanced to BSL Pro- or ChoboLeague only after providing a proof of residency.
On October 11 2018 05:09 Hatchet_man wrote: Hello to all Bombastic players!
BSL5 is going really well with over 200 players already registered and played their games.
Meanwhile, we noticed unusual activity from the current #1 ranked TestID. We investigated this account's stats and it revealed that every single of TestID's games lasted no longer than 15 seconds. Moreover, all his ladder wins came from only two opponents, which accounts can't be viewed and probably were deleted. The only TestID's loss came from third opponent and his account can be accessed. With that said, we assume that fairness of TestID matchmaked stats is questionable and we temporary remove this account from competition. We are asking owner of TestID account to contact BSL administration via Discord or email admin@bombasticstarleague.com and clarify this situation.
Good effort. But what can you do when people start cheating with this method in a less obvious fashion? You can only detect this by comparing game logs when cheaters are not smart about it.
The elephant in the room is that blizzard ladder is obviously not safe towards intentional manipulation.
request replay packs of the strange cases, throw them into bwchart, sort by length and occasionally check the odds. it's incredibly difficult and time consuming.
On October 11 2018 05:09 Hatchet_man wrote: Hello to all Bombastic players!
BSL5 is going really well with over 200 players already registered and played their games.
Meanwhile, we noticed unusual activity from the current #1 ranked TestID. We investigated this account's stats and it revealed that every single of TestID's games lasted no longer than 15 seconds. Moreover, all his ladder wins came from only two opponents, which accounts can't be viewed and probably were deleted. The only TestID's loss came from third opponent and his account can be accessed. With that said, we assume that fairness of TestID matchmaked stats is questionable and we temporary remove this account from competition. We are asking owner of TestID account to contact BSL administration via Discord or email admin@bombasticstarleague.com and clarify this situation.
Good effort. But what can you do when people start cheating with this method in a less obvious fashion? You can only detect this by comparing game logs when cheaters are not smart about it.
The elephant in the room is that blizzard ladder is obviously not safe towards intentional manipulation.
well you just have check the top 20 anyway and probably those will be mostly known players who dont need those kind of methods. So just check if someone suspicious rises up as done with TestID.
EPT
![[image loading]](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/306284178549243907/496040411295645716/faith.png)
and gl to everybody
(with lag), ideally it would be cool if the matchmaking prioritized NA vs EU matchups more often (the player pool expands and the latency is actually playable). If i really wanted to play vs Kors i could just do so on a VPN, it takes 2 secs to run it.![[image loading]](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/461933675324375040/496803899509047317/unknown.png)
![[image loading]](http://i91.fastpic.ru/big/2018/1003/a1/02526f03349f87879be6e839ad3e8da1.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i89.fastpic.ru/big/2018/1003/bf/51265a4de50f6b25038ba0873b364fbf.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/enoWA7K.png)
![[image loading]](http://www.panschk.de/mappage/pics/5075.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/naqwKxo.png)
Bombastic StarLeague 5![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/3gQ53Z3.png)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/WjJYRhQ.png)
