Tournaments

[marc369]

Just throwing this one out there as it has been on my mind and I cannot decide!!

Are there just too many Tournaments these days?

Don't get me wrong I love them, but I remember when you would look forward to one being posted now you have to do the math on if you can afford to join one.

I am just wondering are tournament games just becoming games?

I honestly don't know I have been thinking this for a while and I have been thinking of this post almost as long... So lets keep it constructive and try not to offend all the good people who create them for our pleasure as they do an awesome job

 

[Cardinalsrule]

I kind of agree with marc's thought, not criticizing anyone at all, but it does seem like there are times (like right now) when there are a LOT of tournaments. It's not a huge problem, except for one point; I think that with more, it takes longer for the bigger ones to fill up and that can lead to some awols.


I think that it was Calume that suggested that, when making a larger size tourney, which can take quite a while to fill up, not use team games in the first round (for example, the "1000" tourney, with 100 players, was created on Feb. 23, and still needs 38 people.) Hopefully everyone who signed up will still be around, but there's a fair chance that someone will get screwed by an awol partner in round 1.


I like tourneys also, but possibly the tourney operators could just show a little restraint, and look at how many there are currently waiting to fill up before creating more? There are currently 18 tourneys awaiting players, that seems a little excessive to me. Possibly there could be a limit set on how many we have awaiting, and ask the TO's to not create more until the # goes down? With fewer in the queue, all of them will fill faster. Just a thought. I'd like to hear other's thoughts on this.

 

[Redstorm]

Are there just too many Tournaments these days?

Having just discovered tournaments allow me to share my point of view. I dont join every tourney for different reasons and thats fine. I like having a variety of choices to pick and choose from.

I am just wondering are tournament games just becoming games?

Maybe so but the level of talent and honor are very reliable which is extremely attractive after playing RT games for a month or so LOL. Additionally, who doesnt like 'advancing' after a victory. Bottom line to me is that tourneys are a great ...wish more players would discover that.

:hmmmm2:

 

[airwick]

I agree with Cards and Marc.

It would be good to set a limit on the tourneys. Maybe we, TO's, can use a limit of 2 or 3 awaiting tourneys per TO?

 

[Redstorm]

I'm a new T.O. and admittedly enthusiastic but certainly have no problem with watching the numbers. I like the smaller tourneys anyway but will not create any newer ones if I have two open tourneys already. Sounds reasonable to me

 

[Cardinalsrule]

I agree with Cards and Marc.

It would be good to set a limit on the tourneys. Maybe we, TO's, can use a limit of 2 or 3 awaiting tourneys per TO?

BIG +1 to that idea.

 

[calume]

Tourney with 25 players or more takes a while to get going, the problems is the very large ones will be there for very long time, if you don't count all tourney over 25 players there is about 11 tourneys to choose from which should be going within a few more days, my guess is there is a base of about 20 regular tourney players who are pretty much in all tourneys, the right amount of tourney (for 24 players or less) to suit the regular tourney players should be at 5 or 6 open ones, setting up tourneys is a learning experience, after a while you get to know which maps and settings are most popular and which are less popular. so I will take a break on setting them up if there is enough to choose from that's fine, if you go in the archive you'll see that at one point I created 22 tourneys within 3 days and they all got going within 6 days, mostly because they were under 21 players. It use to be that advertising tourneys was random, for time to time you would go on the tourney page and get to look at different tourney features, the 1000 tourney has been featured for months without any change, hopefully we get to look at something else in 6 months!!

 

[smi]

As i see it the main problem that marc369 is talking about is that the tourney flavour is getting lost when joining many tourney games, since you have like 20 tour games in your que and hence wont take the time to track them all so they seem like regular games.

BUT if you think about it , the problem with this is not the number of tournaments we have open but the number of tournaments one joins. So you gotta be more selective with tourneys if you want the extra flavour and interest to exist in the ones you join.

BUT again, taking it to the next level, i think that the main reason we spam tour games, and all the small tours fill up pretty fast, is because the quality of the normal games is so much worse!

Right now if you check the open games you wont find any really intresting games with nice settings and with all the nice faces you see in the tours. The public game que are mostly games created from new accounts, games with triples and doubles of high ranks (that i avoid since i dont have a stable partner) and 1/8 or 3/10 games with nice settings, which will never fill up tho, and when they do indeed fill up there is a high chance of an AWOL player.

The week before i created some 12 domain games with 4 and 5 player which i think are all turning out as great games, but i think thats an exception and maybe it helped that i invited the guys on my friend list. ( a lot of faces out of my friend list in these games as well tho)

What im getting at , and sorry for the long post, is that if we had some good games in the public que there would not be such a high demand for tourney games and their flavour would increase again. And as a sidenote even if we get games with good settings in the que we need to ensure that they wont get lost in the 10s of other games there.

 

[Cardinalsrule]

What im getting at , and sorry for the long post, is that if we had some good games in the public que there would not be such a high demand for tourney games and their flavour would increase again. And as a sidenote even if we get games with good settings in the que we need to ensure that they wont get lost in the 10s of other games there.

I understand and agree with what smi said about the public queue, one of the issues is that 'big' (12 and 24 player) games stay there for a long time, and that clogs it up. I'd be in favor of a suggestion that Chilly made a long time back, have games get automatically deleted if they've been there too long. I believe that his formula was 1 week for every player. So if a 12-player game doesn't fill up in 12 weeks, poof, it goes away, etc. That would go a long ways towards cleaning up the public queue, IMO.


Right now there are 18 24-player and 9 12-player games in the queue, that's over 1/4 of the visible games under the default view. Make sure that they don't sit there forever, and there would be a lot more games that people find interesting.

 

[Bluebonnet]

No opinion on if there are too many tourneys or not. But i do believe they are changing the casual games. Along with the normal tourneys, there is the MoM, BMoM and Battlefield Earth. A lot of experienced players have a majority of their games tied up in these and are not seen in the casual games as much anymore.

I do think an increase in tourneys is helping on the upward trend of points.

But does any of this matter? What are the downsides other than less casual games and players? Is that necessarily bad?

I am a definite advocate of taking out ALL 24 player games and fixed force games and sticking them in a different section. If only commander class can play them, why clog up casual with them? Still leave them visible to all. Kind of like holding out a carrot to the lower membership classes to encourage them to upgrade. Maybe add team assassin to that mix as well.

 

[airwick]

I understand and agree with what smi said about the public queue, one of the issues is that 'big' (12 and 24 player) games stay there for a long time, and that clogs it up. I'd be in favor of a suggestion that Chilly made a long time back, have games get automatically deleted if they've been there too long. I believe that his formula was 1 week for every player. So if a 12-player game doesn't fill up in 12 weeks, poof, it goes away, etc. That would go a long ways towards cleaning up the public queue, IMO.


Right now there are 18 24-player and 9 12-player games in the queue, that's over 1/4 of the visible games under the default view. Make sure that they don't sit there forever, and there would be a lot more games that people find interesting.

Like that idea. Maybe we can do the same with tournaments that don't fill up witin a month.

 

[calume]

Like that idea. Maybe we can do the same with tournaments that don't fill up witin a month.

Totally agree with that, might be a bit of a downer if the buy in gets lost!!, but again, the very large tourneys are the ones not getting going, the tourneys with the right amount of players have been going steady so far.

 

[sensadrome]

Totally agree with that, might be a bit of a downer if the buy in gets lost!!, but again, the very large tourneys are the ones not getting going, the tourneys with the right amount of players have been going steady so far.

Big +1 for that too - it's an interesting discussion altogether. I am a T.O. who is yet to start a tourney - not that I am derelict in my duty, but really that when I look in the Tourney section I have always thought there were a bit too many (plus I find the banner image intimidating, cos there have been so many really funny and very artistic ones done... but that's another story )

The alternative to the maximum amount of tourneys per T.O (which I think is a really good idea) and / or a maximum amount of total tourneys (across the board) would be to have a maximum number of tourneys any player can enter at the same time. * dons flame proof suit *

 

[smi]

The alternative to the maximum amount of tourneys per T.O (which I think is a really good idea) and / or a maximum amount of total tourneys (across the board) would be to have a maximum number of tourneys any player can enter at the same time. * dons flame proof suit *

IMO this would be a totally wrong call... We love tourneys ! why limit us ?

As i have writen above more extensively, i think the problem is that with so much lower quality and quantity of games in the public que some players resort to spaming tourneys to play some good games!

 

[Redstorm]

As i have writen above more extensively, i think the problem is that with so much lower quality and quantity of games in the public que some players resort to spaming tourneys to play some good games!

Right on the mark! Better games, honorable (higher percentage anyway) players. Whats not to like?

 

[calume]

Big +1 for that too - it's an interesting discussion altogether. I am a T.O. who is yet to start a tourney - not that I am derelict in my duty, but really that when I look in the Tourney section I have always thought there were a bit too many (plus I find the banner image intimidating, cos there have been so many really funny and very artistic ones done... but that's another story )

intimidating banner image?, cool stuff, dying to know which banner is the winner, LOL

 

[Bluebonnet]

Matter of opinion on if there are better games in tournament vs casual. One man's garbage is another man's treasure.

For example, I make no bones about it, I like team games. I am usually selective about partners which takes months to years to get to know good people that you can count on. While I also tend to play team games in tournaments, it is defenitley not as much fun. End up playing with awol players or people you just dont get along with. Yuck

My question is till what is the issue? There are more tournaments. That is a statement. What issue is it causing that needs to be fixed?

 

[Cardinalsrule]

I am a T.O. who is yet to start a tourney - not that I am derelict in my duty, but really that when I look in the Tourney section I have always thought there were a bit too many (plus I find the banner image intimidating, cos there have been so many really funny and very artistic ones done... but that's another story

I also am a TO, but I haven't made a tourney in a couple of years, basically because, as Sensa said, there always seems to be quite a few in there. (Plus, yes, I also have had issues making good banners.) But I just haven't had the inclination to make a tourney when there's 10 or more waiting to fill up.

Matter of opinion on if there are better games in tournament vs casual. One man's garbage is another man's treasure.

For example, I make no bones about it, I like team games. I am usually selective about partners which takes months to years to get to know good people that you can count on. While I also tend to play team games in tournaments, it is defenitley not as much fun. End up playing with awol players or people you just dont get along with. Yuck

My question is till what is the issue? There are more tournaments. That is a statement. What issue is it causing that needs to be fixed?

I don't think there are any MAJOR issues, seeing the same tourney that's been there for months and still needs 20-30 people is a bit sad, plus when they have team games in round 1 SOMEONE is going to get screwed with an awol partner. There have even been issues when a large tourney (finally) starts with a 1v1 set of games, and both players in a game are awol, which brings the tourney to a screeching halt after round 1. I just don't think that we have a large enough base of people who play the tournaments to fill up the big ones in a timely manner. Limiting the small ones might get the big ones to fill up.

 

[Bluebonnet]

got ya. so it is about how to improve tourney and maybe casual as well. i have thoughts for that.

a expiration date works. but it is possible to get old games going, nukes 035924 comes to mind.

awol players suck hard. not only with team games, but assassins becomes an issue as well for obvious reasons.

the site is being recoded. so how about a script that runs after the last player joins but before the game starts. it kicks anyone out that has not logged in to majcom for the last 72 hours. if anyone fits into that rule, the spots opens up and the game doesn't start.

 

[Bluebonnet]

Also, a lot more though on a person's abilities to create games in casual and tournies. I belive the increase in tournaments was a direct result of a clogged casual game system. About 6 months to a year ago, there were dozens of 12 player and 24 player games that clogged the casual games and nothing moved. I think that had a lot to do with the increase in tournaments.