Interest in a Zan CTF tourney?

[Samurai]

Yeah, another one of these threads...

It's just an idea I had, especially with what seems to be a recent activity surge in priv. What I wanted to be different from other failed CTF torunies is that I wanted to focus on attracting active and commited players rather than prioritisng skilled players like others have done in the past. Personally I'd love to commit to something like this, and would like other players who are active to be interested too.

Again nothing concrete, but just an idea i had considering more people seem to be around now. Anyone interested or is it doomed from the start?

[capodecima]

I think its too early. You want focus on new players. But who are this new players? I think when ELO system stabilizes and some new/old players appear there is sense talk about CTF tourneys. In future CTF tourney there could be some rule like join only with ELO 1200 or something, which could coerce ppl play and maybe attract new players. But this is just potentional idea and i have no idea how ELO will works in real.

[Samurai]

Not necessarily new players, but players who are active. Look at TE for example, they have a lot of players who play regularly, but in past tourneys they havn't been given a chance because some captains would rather pick inactive old IDL players who have probably never played Zandronum before anyway. If there was enough interest in something like, i would prioritise players who want to play over picking players because they played in the IDL 596342 years ago.

[SwordGrunt]

I can't see a way of not prioritizing skilled players besides, say, only allowing 1 per team

as in, the 'good' players would be the captains and the others would be picked by them

though as usual there would be drama, since 'good player' is rather subjective

it'd be down to people to have common sense and contribute to having some fun games instead of messing it up

[capodecima]

I think i can speak for myself. Skilled ppl are not interested in tournaments anymore. After when IDL died, there is not so much interest play some ctf tourney or so. Maybe you could just make some low/mid/mid-high skill tournament and we'll see what happens. I say this is NOT best time for ctf tournaments.

[John Zombie]

history teaches that any st/zan events dealing with teams(read:all of them except duel tourneys) are doomed to failure no matter what... the last TDM tourney is a fine example, almost nobody bothered to play their games despite the fact most of the signed up players were quite active.
That said I'm down for it, as long as there's some decent organizers properly dealing with forfeiters/people signing up then disappearing/whatnot

[Samurai]

The problem with the last tourney was, well to hell with it, i'll name names, you would get various players like turska and Hatred sign up. Yeah these were/are great players no doubt, but have they ever played this port for more than a couple of days? Captains would pick these sort of players because of their names even though neither of them probably had any intention to commit to such a tournament, whilst you had active players wanting to play not getting picked.

I want a ctf tourney to be based on activity, and getting games finished rather than the quality of it. If we can prove to ourselves that we can get a small CTF based tourney finished such as this, we could maybe move onto a bigger project. It would also be a showcase for certain players to show others what they are about, as many deserving players have been overlooked in the past tournaments weve staged.

TL DR I want an active ctf tourney over the quality of one.

[Konar6]

Just let players form the teams themselves and sign up, as it worked way before IDL even existed. What's with the "picking" fad? Are you making a spin-off of IDL, an organized priv, or a CTF tourney? Even the TDM tourney was being arranged for some kind of forced teams, until a drama led it to the right way of players forming the teams. Above all, it is more enjoyable to play with your buddies, rather than "randomly" picked players.

[SwordGrunt]

well Konar that's nice and all but the "picking" evens the teams out, it's not enjoyable to play with your buddies if you know you'll get crushed

unless you just make an all-elite thing which he stated was not the point and has failed numerous times before

[Samurai]

The reason i thought of picking players rather than letting them pick their own teams was because it seems to alike to 'scrimming' and well, we do that on a daily basis anyway. Although if people would rather it be clan based instead of randomly selected, i'm all for that too.

[Alpha_]

Hi, I would contribute to this with all my possible time I have. I was actually talking to Water about his stats server/website, on when it'll be released, and once it was released, that I would be able to use his servers, under his permission, on reviving the ZCC. I've been re-reading the ZCC forum/threads, I've been looking to either continue their original system (format), or use a different one I've been using on ZD's ZCL. Before anyone starts, or refers, to ZD being trash and bad, etc. I was able, with the help of other members, to complete the season of 7 weeks, and soon to be done with season 2. You could look at that at your own time, if you want. But on topic, I would help organize this tourney, or we could revive ZCC after Water's release of his stats site.

[Samurai]

To be honest I don't want to revive any failed CTF league. I want to get away from that mentality of the IDL style leagues. What I had in mind for such a tourney was for it to be quick, enjoyable and successsful. As much as I'm looking forward to the upcoming stats system, it's not what 'm looking for here. If (and it's a big if) we could finish a small ctf tourney, it would be easier to plan for something bigger and better than what i was planning.

What I had in mind was:

* A 2 week CTF Tournament
* 3vs3 and 5 teams, so a total of 15 players.
* No set schedule to play games, just play other teams when you see them online.
* Best of 3 games, each game being 10 minutes?
* 5 captains, picking 2 players each from a player pool. (Unless people would rather it be clan based)

What are people's thoughts?

[Watermelon]

Here is what the league requires and why it would be nearly impossible to run a functioning one on zan:

- Apathy:
A league is very hard to run and requires all 3 members to have reasonable times. You cannot have one guy who can only make 1 day, or else if the other team can't play, that's it. It seems possible on paper, but in all my league experiences with IDL, ZCL, ZCC and running other leagues... they ALWAYS are very tight with times and result in hair-ripping accommodations to be made. This is why Bones is Ralphis 2.0.
ZCC showed that even with Stallion's good intentions, people even in his own clan would forfeit/no-show. Assuming people won't in general is a fatal flaw.

- Teams:
Teams have to be snake pick with no franchising (selecting someone ahead of time). Otherwise, it'll just be Jenova/Stall/Saber vs everyone and then it's just a giant clan scrim.

- Ego:
Because the above requires random teams, people won't play with others. Some people won't play on a team they will lose on. Some people in R and higher tier clans just do not want to play with bad players, so they won't sign up for this. Some middle tier players who think bad of certain people will not play if they get with person X or Y, then the team falls apart into a "#teams - 1" league.
People tend to lose interest after the first two matches if they lose both. This is impossible to fight unless all teams are relatively equal, which is impossible to do unless the captains are aligned with picks from the player pool to give the most balance (which results in predefined teams and people don't tend to like this).

- Times:
Adding in euros will destroy this. Since zandro always has a mix of both, this will exclude a lot of them. Anyone who thinks euro's on zandronum will work on american times is blind. The true warriors like turska/nosturi/etc who used to stay up till 4+ am are long gone and don't exist on zan.

- History:
Every league has pretty much failed on zan. Though the ZCC did complete, it was due to forfeits.
Therefore, do we go by the definition of insanity being "doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result?"


=======================

My solutions to the above:
If I had to go full totalitarian on a league, I would do this to make it work:

1) Have it limited to only truly active people, even if this means 4 teams

2) If the player pool is too skill stagnant (no uniformity among skill), set it up with somewhat predetermined teams so games are close and people have a reason to play the weeks after rather than being a rock bottom team with no hope.

3) Pick a solid map pool everyone likes and knows

4) Make it american only with only euros who will commit to obscene times
IMO the euro div is just too dead for a solid league. America is close to this but ZCL proved it an still be done.

5) Deny anyone who has flaked in the past, no questions

6) Deny anyone from captaining who is not on IRC active every day (this includes pretend AFKers who are on IRC but not actually there most of the time)

7) Prevent dumbasses who think they know everything from joining, or else you'll get "this league is dumb, should have been run *this* way or *that* way" and they'll RQ.

8) Use IDL settings (because they are tried/tested/true and just make sense in CTF: 3v3, 10 mins, continue on disconnect...etc), there's a reason those are the standard.

9) Prepare to take the criticism from the above as all the denied people give it a terrible name and most likely hinder signups from the bad publicity.





I even believe what I wrote above for 1-9 is so unfeasible that it wouldn't even have a league happen... but you see league leaders cutting the edges on these rules and then we end up with all these broken CTF leagues and just end up pointing the fingers at the players who caused it, rather than the administrators who didn't lock them out in the first place because of the greed of wanting people.

Then you may say: "Too strict requirements = not enough players = no point in running a league", which is the answer to the question: Doom CTF leagues are probably extinct.

Would I sign up? Probably if I knew it wasn't full of bailing players and wasn't going to be clan scrims in league form. I just don't think the remaining player base is capable of leagues anymore unless you trim the fat in such a hostile way it would threaten the league survival itself.

[Zakken]

The success of a league depends entirely on the administration's babysitting constantly monitoring its development, along with the captains involved, if you're going with the draft idea. My MiniCTF project almost worked because most of the captains that volunteered for it were very reliable players. However, much to my dismay, it turned out that even 6 teams, with a total of 24 players, diluted the playerbase to the point of the tourney reaching its natural crashing course. I would advise you to keep it small (4 teams was the original intended amount of teams for MiniCTF ), and pick your captains carefully.

I don't see a good reason to factor ELO into this sort of tournament. No one plays priv with the same mindset as when they're playing a league match, unless you're named Tai. As for certain good players not being around anymore like they were in IDL, who cares? If the old high-tier clad leaves, then the mid-tier will become the new high-tier. It doesn't take much to realize that, and you would be a fool to let that interfere with your decision to host a CTF tourney. The saying "I prefer an active tourney over a 'quality' one" makes little sense, because there is not a single ounce of quality in a tournament if people don't play their games and just bail out. Anything you can get that goes from start to finish successfully WILL be of superior quality than anything that doesn't.

the last TDM tourney is a fine example, almost nobody bothered to play their games despite the fact most of the signed up players were quite active.

I won't mention any names, but the TDM tourney's administration team was awfully subpar, or so I've heard. I can assure you it would have turned out better if somebody who fits the administrator job well took the crown.

About the draft vs no draft debate, SwiftShot put it nicely. Would you rather have, for example, "[R] Team", "[EG] Team" and "<VGL> Team" populating your tourney, or interestingly mixed teams with theoretically equal skill levels? IDL was the only thing that kept a good chunk of people interested in a decaying port (which is ZDaemon), and one vital factor behind that was that it kept teams fresh and entertaining, both from the players and the spectators' point of view, in a port where the clan scene is barren, and the scrims were few and far between. I've only seen R, UD or NS face each other off about 3 times in total, from my time joining the IDL community in late 2010 to IDL's move out of ZDaemon in mid 2012. If IDL managed to keep people coming to said port for 6 years (not counting the time IDL was hosted in Odamex), then it's evident that a draft system here should keep the players interested, even moreso than in ZD.

* A 2 week CTF Tournament
* 3vs3 and 5 teams, so a total of 15 players.
* No set schedule to play games, just play other teams when you see them online.
* Best of 3 games, each game being 10 minutes?
* 5 captains, picking 2 players each from a player pool. (Unless people would rather it be clan based)

So, round robin style? And I assume the teams will be the ones picking the maps to be played. You'll have to make up rules for tiebreaking maps though. I suppose that should suffice for a first take on a tourney, but I'd suggest making predetermined match-ups and predetermined maps in the future, since it's more "random" that way, and random plays a positive role in maintaining interest, just like drafts do.

- Apathy:
- Teams:
- Ego:
- Times:

Apathy and Times sections reinforce the idea that having reliable (and preferably, American) captains is paramount to a proper development of the league. Teams reinforce the fact that drafts will probably keep things fresh. Ego is one of the most difficult factors, and one that the admins and captains (if good ones) have no direct control over. The best way to handle it is to deliver judgment fast and move on with it, as in, no delaying games to benefit a certain group, or constantly circumventing your own predefined rules in order to solve an issue (doing it sporadically is fine though).

1) Have it limited to only truly active people, even if this means 4 teams

Yessir. 4 teams is a tourney size that is yet to be tested. Great post overall, Water.

[bless_]

I'm liking your idea, active CTF tourney over quality one (which of course overtime, its only common sense that a league will build up its reputation and so it will have more potential for it to become a quality league) even if its only 4 teams.
And I really liked what water suggested to you. Specially on denying players who have bailed out on past leagues, denying OP/Clan base teams, picking familiarized maps that everyone knows and bring in interest from players.
This really can work out but keep those points in mind. They are crucial and specially here in zandro.

[AlexMax]

The thing that always kind of bugged me about Zandronum tournaments is that even though you have the odd one pop up every once in a while, there's never any regularity to them. The IDL had a regular schedule, and back in the heyday of ZDaemon duel tournaments there was literally one a month or one every other month on a regular schedule. I feel like if there was something regular, it would give players something to look forward to instead of playing Minecraft or League or whatever else all day.

I'd start with a duel tournament and see how reliable your Zandronum player pool REALLY is in a relatively low-risk setting. Then, try a small 2v2 TDM tournament, exactly a month (or whenever) after the first one. And then graduate to 3v3 CTF.

[Nati46]

I think that the main reason why the TDM tourney didn't work out is because the players just didn't want to play.
This can be attributed partly to the management not pressuring everyone to play their games (or at least not enough), but also to the players themselves - most whom have been active enough to have it finished long ago, who did not successfully schedule games even though all of the servers and rules have been eventually laid out and set.
We assumed that allowing them to choose their partner would boost this forward but apparently it still didn't achieve anything - few games have been played and no subdivision had been completed. Was it because they didn't like the setups? I honestly don't think so, as our configuration has been similiar to grandvoid's standard TDM config along with the timelimit/instaspawn and optional freelook. Not that people were used to any config as TDM has never been very popular and the tourney was an attempt to revive it (Seeing J scrimming and organising alot of TDM games recently might affirm that it somewhat succeeded)
Maybe we should have started it smaller, after all there were 16 teams overall so I guess it was rather too ambitious, after all it was 2013, not 2011 or whatever heyday period skulltag was on, a smaller group of the most reliable players would have been a better idea probably, the lesser amount of players means that less matches have to be scheduled, people are more motivated to finish it because there isn't much to play, etc. So your idea you brought up on IRC about having few teams of the most reliable players is a good start.

Also those who suggested that only american timezones may participate: You are wrong, many euros (Including me, right now it is 4:00AM as I am writing this, which I am able to be up on due to work schedules and stuff) are able to play on american hours (The EG-LF scrimmages last month proved it, where the euro team of LF was the only mainly scrimming EG on american times). Of course willingness to play on american times could be a requirement for euros, but outright excluding euros is a bad idea which will also cause alienation and will just make many people hate it because it doesn't allow them to play without a real reason (Those who can stay up at EST hours) So just pick those who can play in those times to participate.

[Samurai]

I've read all your comments and I appreciate them. I've tried to respond to most people in IRC.

The main objective of this is to see if it can be built into something bigger. So far I've hand picked 14 out of 15 people to play in this, who I regard as active within the competitive community for now. Ideally if I can get the final person for tomorrow, I'd like to do the draft asap and get this underway rather than stalling it for whatever reason. I know this seems sudden, probably too sudden, but people have tight schedules and the next 2-3 weeks seems like a good window to host such an event in.

Hopefully i'll update this with more news tomorrow.

[Lollipop]

Another thing that would probably add to the interest would be new maps, would be worth a try, rite?
I could also imagine if the matches were played on a specific server in a specific time interval. If you can not play in that timeframe, you should not have signed up in the first place and have no excuse for not playing your match for a week straight.

[Nati46]

New maps? Maybe introducing less popular maps from the pack like the IDL has done often, I don't think that a new pack is required for the tourney (the new start room and modifications on water's server are more than enough for this) then again from what I figured teams will pick the maps and a neutral map will be chosen every week, which gives less opportunity for diversity but poses a smaller risk for teams to be unmotivated to play because they don't like the map. For something small and emerging like this it is a good idea imo.
Teams will schedule the games themselves and will probably notify the organisers to deal with no-shows and stuff. The whole tourney is meant to last 2 weeks +-.