Head Hunters Rebranding

Most people in KSI are familiar with Head Hunters, our competitive league. Teams from all the divisions face off against each other in a single game for a season to see who will reign supreme. Awesome, right? Yes and no. 

Head Hunters has its ups and downs, as with anything. There were issues with the stats and the rules and regulations, but the biggest issues seem to stem from a lack of balanced teams. Some Divisions were far more competitive and had a larger pool of players to draw from than others. This left some teams with that “why bother” feeling when pitted against the more competitive Divisions. In a move to make it more member oriented, they are smoothing out some of the kinks in Head Hunters and rebranding it.

The Changes

Head Hunters will now be known as the KSI Competitive League (KCL). Most notably it will no longer be a Division based League. The plan, as outlined here, involves a draft or bidding system. Eight team captains will be picked. All players, including the captains, will be given an opportunity to show off their abilities and then be assigned a value based on performance. Each captain will have the same number of credits to “spend” in the newly created bidding system. Their own personal values will be subtracted from their total credits. This should lead to more balanced teams. In the interest of keeping them that way, trades will be possible, but only as long as the players being traded are ranked similarly. 

Why Is This a Good Thing?

It will be difficult for any single team to be over powered. Some teams may play better together than others, but no single team should, in theory, be able to demolish all of the competition easily. It will allow for more strategy and less total domination. The matches will be more fun to both participate in and to watch on the KSILive Twitch channel and no single team should feel discouraged.

What do the Players think?

A few former head hunter competitors were badgered for their thoughts on the proposed changes. The response was fairly unanimous: it sounds really good, but the only way to know if it is an improvement is to try it out. The skills based draft system really seemed to peak their interests though.

One head hunter picked up on the stats issue. Different game types have different stats. To keep them consistent you end up needing 12 different screen shots in order to get it all. That is a lot for the Tournaments & Events staff to be able to do quickly and keep track of. It will be interesting to see how the statistics get handled and are improved going forward.

In the comments on the forums post the issue of wanting to be able to play with your friends came up. Tournaments & Events have considered this. The drafting system will make this diffcult to guarantee. However, there is mention of there being a place for requests like that on the sign up form.

Have Your Say

Is this perfect? Possibly not yet, but KSI Gambit 7 has invited you to leave comments and suggestions as they finalize the rules and regulations. Stop by the forums post and share your thoughts, or ask questions. 

It will be exciting to see what these changes bring. Hopefully fierce competition and a fun season ahead to watch on our twitch stream.