14 replies to this topic

[Mongoose Trueborn]

Beta Community Warfare League

A league is needed to increase the player base and give competitive players something to actually do in this game. The previous player created leagues were fun, but I feel they were over restrictive and did not encourage growth. Below is a summary of what I am going to do about it.
1) Non restrictive: We will create a rule set that encourages playing the game as much as possible.
2) Use game mechanics to our advantage: Instead of having to fight team x at time y, we will have an open ended schedule that allows teams to quickly and repeatedly drop vs. other teams.
3) Ladder scoring system: Will evolve with score decay and strength of schedule modifier. Simple, simple, simple to start and then evolve. We need something NOW.
4) 1 Ref per team: Each team that enters the league will select one member to represent their unit. Every Ref will have an equal say in any issues that come up.
5) Something for everyone: We will start with a schedule of Mon-Thurs from 9-12 ET. Each night will feature different game modes and drop themes. If there is demand for it we can easily add more time zones.
6) Open source community fed development: A league for the players built by the players. If you are a developer or programmer and would like to help out please send me a PM.
7) Rosters: Unit leaders will post in a forum their desire to enter the league. Every member of their unit will post in the same thread declaring they play for that team. Players can easily change teams at anytime by making a post in the same thread and declaring that they are leaving. After a 1 week cool down they may join any other team.
8) Mercs: Each team can play with a max of 2 mercs for any competitive play. It does not matter if they are from a different team, recruits, or simply random pugs. They will be required to declare they are mercs at the start of the drop.
9) Drops: Every clan that is in the league and wishes to play that night simply gets into the 8man queue and drops at whatever tonnage/game mode the drop is for that night. We will be able to get creative on what types of drops we do. At the start of the match you will confirm that it is another league team and if so, fight.
10) Reporting: The winner will post the screen shot in a thread with a note giving the two teams that played.

I feel that this model is deviating from every previous league 100%. It’s not going to end your season if you lose one game. You don’t have to play every night. When you do want to play, it will be easy to quickly find competitive matches. ELO will help place you against teams that are of your same talent level. The volume of games you can play will be 10x what any other league can offer. I could go on but if you have read it to this point then I’m sure you get it.

More to come.

Edited by Mongoose Trueborn, 03 July 2013 - 08:44 PM.

[Vas79]

Sounds ambitious, and pretty fun. I like it.

[Villz]

The thing I mainly like about this concept. Is that it uses a metric (elo rating) that doesn't punish you for not playing every day. So unlike the tournies in house it's not a grindfest. Looking forward to play all the units over an extended period.

[Soy]

Can I be Duncan Fisher? I just want to call matches. That sounds hella fun. Dunno how I'd do it though.

ANYWAYS on the topic at hand; yeah. That's right. Legit **** right here. Makin it happen. Got big plans. Do it.

ps - anyone with skizzils should get involved, by skizzils i mean skizzils not not related to pooping on other robots; and hey if you are good at pooping on robots you should prolly get involved too, why not

Edited by Soy, 03 July 2013 - 09:50 AM.

[PEEFsmash]

Here is a bit more detail about what we were thinking:

At 9pm (or 8pm, or whenever we decide), all teams will meet up in a Teamspeak, and all will drop simultaneously. This eliminates any and all problems with sync dropping that have been plaguing every other league. Drops will be repeated every 20 minutes or so, giving teams enough time to finish games and make team adjustments. Not much time should be needed between games, because the whole night will be one drop weight. Because we will all be dropping at the same time, if in-game Elo is working correctly, you should be getting matched up with teams similar in skill to your own. If you improve and beat those teams consistently, your in-game Elo will obviously increase and you will face better competition. Again, because all teams will be dropping simultaneously, there will be teams representing the full range of skill levels queing at any time. No multi-hour missed sync drops, no hour long waits in the 8man que to get a game.

Every match played during this time, (or even any official scrim that is set up between units at other times, if both teams agree to have it count) will be recorded. We hope to have a match reporting system where both the winner and the loser report. If we can get everyone to do this reliably, it will make the system autonomous. We expect everyone will have the sportsmanship to report their own losses. If there is a conflict or something of that sort, we will have a thread where you will post screenshots of the match result. You will be expected to post the screenshot before you play your next game, because order of matches matters to the Elo calculation we will be running. (Until we get the match self-reporting system down, this will be our only way of recording wins/losses.) Our Elo calculation will have a decay on it. If your unit goes a certain amount of time without fielding a team (maybe 2+ days? maybe a certain # of matches per week? It is up to the team leaders to decide) your team's Elo will slowly decay. This is to prevent teams from camping at the top with high Elo and never playing another match to preserve it. We aren't expecting you to play 3 hours every day, but we are expecting regular participation so we can derive meaningful results.

About our Elo calculation. Basically, we want our leaderboards to be based on an Elo system. We will all start at a baseline Elo on night one, (or better yet, seed teams into Elo brackets based on past tourney results) and from there, everyone's wins/losses will be fed into the formula. This should normalize fairly quickly due to the volume of matches that will be getting fed into the system. In a 3 hour session, each team should be able to play 15+ games. With 8 teams dropping (what we hope to be the minimum # of participants) this will be 120 official results every single night. This will give us a TRUE understanding of who the top teams are, what teams are on the rise, etc. Strength of schedule is obviously part of Elo calculations, so you will be rewarded for beating top teams, and not punished greatly by losing to them.

We will be self-governing. No non-players telling the players what to do. All big decisions will be made via vote of the team representatives. Each unit will nominate one representative. We don't care if you ****-talk eachother, in fact we encourage it. However, there will be much less of a need to ****-talk when you will be meeting up with so many different teams every night with relevant results. Gone are the days of one single match making or breaking your tournament results. One match is one match, and when you play 15 a night, each match is meaningful but no single loss will break your back.

This league will encourage self-improvement, community spirit, respect, and fraternity between units, and above all will result in great competition, a full 8man que, and results that matter. After a few weeks, because we expect to have 600 results per week, we will have results that each and every unit can be proud of, and a meaningful leaderboard of who the best teams in beta are, and what teams we should look out for in the future.

If you are interested in being a part of this, please post your unit's name and a contact email so we can start gathering teams right away. The competitive 8man community needs this now, and we plan on making it happen very soon.

Edited by PEEFsmash, 03 July 2013 - 11:52 AM.

[Mongoose Trueborn]

Peef is going into details on where we plan to take the league. The stuff with elo calc and automation for reporting games isn't hard to do, it just take time and talent. We will use much simpler implantation at the start.

[Hellz Own]

Nice, great way to go about gaming and having fun. I"ll get a few of my Comstar Irregulars buddies to suit up and prep their mechs.

[End Crescendo]

Awesome! We already have a bunch of teams that have pledged their support.

[TheMagician]

Sounds pretty fun/interesting. We are fairly busy with the various leagues, so we'll have to decide how intensely we want to participate in this, but we'll definitely participate to some degree.

[Adrian Steel]

I feel this is the appropriate forum to get more bads into getting stomped and steamrolled in a mass production manner. As the Patron Saint of mediums of the Church of Skill, I approve of this message and/or service.

[End Crescendo]

I am the choir boy of the church of skill.

[The Legendary Samurai]

Sounds like an interesting concept. You have Paragon's attention.

Like SJR, we have other commitments, but will likely participate to some degree, especially owing to the aforementioned non-restrictive format. We look forward to hearing more about this league.

[Jyi]

Interesting. Almost interesting enough to draw me back to competitive playing.

[DarklightCA]

All I can say is, you cannot go wrong with more leagues. Good luck.

[Mongoose Trueborn]

It's sad it has taken this long to get everything up and running. My real life was simply too busy to get it done quicker and I needed help. Big thanks to [DV8] Nuclear Weapon for doing the programming to make it all happen and QQ Valder for putting it all together and design.

We are still putting up the final details but you are all welcome to stop by and start signing up your team. Please select at least one member from your team to be the "frontman" who reports wins and confirms losses and also a team ref that will represent your unit with all issues that may come up.

http://communitywarfare.com