86 replies to this topic

[InnerSphereNews]

Greetings MechWarriors,

The Regional Qualifiers Match Schedule for the MechWarrior Online World Championship 2016 Tournament is now available!

153 Teams will be throwing down the gauntlet for their chance at a piece of the Prize Pool, which has now grown to over $130,000 USD thanks to all the players who have shown their support with the Tournament Supporter Pack.

REGIONAL QUALIFIERS MATCH SCHEDULE

The first set of Regional Qualifier matches for the Europe and Africa Region are set to start on June 2nd, with The Americas following on June 3rd. Asia and Oceanic Regional Qualifiers are set to start on August 18th!

Check out a complete list of all participating Teams here!

> IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR ALL TEAM CAPTAINS! <

YOUR TEAM REQUIRES A TAG!

The registration process for your desired Tournament Team Tag is now live! Team Captains must assign a Team Tag prior to June 1st at 10:00 AM PDT / 5:00 PM UTC. Any Team which has not assigned a Tag by that time will be provided with one, derived either from their numeric Team ID or their Team Name.

ASSIGN YOUR TEAM TAG HERE

There are some important things to consider when assigning your Team Tag:

• Only the Team Captain can assign the Team Tag.

• Much like the Team Name, a Team Tag that matches an existing Unit Tag in MechWarrior Online can only be used if you are an active member of that Unit.

• The Team Tag can only be comprised of alphanumeric characters (A-Z 0-9)

• The Team Tag must be between 1 to 4 characters in length.

• You must assign your Team Tag by June 1st at 10:00 AM PDT / 5:00 PM UTC!

Keep an eye out for future MWOWC 2016 Updates on our main page, or check out the Next Steps section for details!

Want to join us for MECHCON 2016?

Tickets are available now!

[Gas Guzzler]

5 pm pacific games ensure anyone on the west coast with a full time job is going to miss out.

[TercieI]

Gas Guzzler, on 20 May 2016 - 02:43 PM, said:

5 pm pacific games ensure anyone on the west coast with a full time job is going to miss out.

And Friday and Saturday games every weekend all summer, anyone who's, well, human, is going to miss out.

This is, IMO, literally, the dumbest PGI move ever.

[Grrzoot]

Yeah all these weekend dates for adults over the summer is ridiculous.

[Dirk Le Daring]

3 - 4 characters for team tag ????

Why not 1 - 4 ?

I have a hard time understanding this restriction. Please clarify reason(s) for this PGI, as it makes not one bit of sense.

[Paul Inouye]

I will update you all further on the schedule, why it is the way it is and how there *might* be a possible work around for timing of matches but that is going to have to be vetted before making a comment. This update will be on Tuesday (noon PDT) after all admin level people dealing with the tournament structure have been notified and submitted their opinions on the matter.

Just want you to know that no matter what the outcome on Tuesday is, we still have to burn through 11K+ matches and end in time for teams to make preparations for travel to the Finals. It is imperative that matches are completed in a timely manner in order to meet this deadline.

That being said, I will be proposing that matches can be played outside of the scheduled window of a match but has to be completed before the official scheduled match date/time. Of course more details will have to be fleshed out to make this work and I will update on the outcome of the meetings that are going to be required for this.

As for Team Tags, I see in Dirk's post above, Tags can be 1-4 characters in length. I'll have the web team update that in the information release.

[coe7]

Why is it that you can not play with less than 8 players available? People schedule their weekends off to just get a DQ match because opponent only has 7 online. And many teams on the list can win others 3 or even 4 man down.

[shadowcat67]

Can you open the rosters for the vetted teams that have less than 12 players? Playing 81 games in North America is going to tax the 9 of us on my team.
We thought there would be fewer games.
Also the games are Thursday through Saturday in NA, correct? based on the utc time.

[VVonka]

The current schedule will not work, I am a team leader and we would literally have to drop out or forfeit a large amount of matches because of the number of concurrent Friday and Saturday matches (for only 1 match a night mostly). We were prepared to play 4-6 matches a night 2 nights a week on a alternating schedule but this is unworkable.

I appreciate the response and possible solution to the issue. I would propose a framework be set to allow for scheduling and for that scheduling to be enforced. Maybe define set match windows of 45 minutes so teams can post "We are open for 2nd window Tuesday and 3rd Thursday" that way other teams can respond and a schedule can be filled out in advance. Having organized many comp seasons over multiple leagues for 2 years I can tell you that even working in 6 match nights for 6 weeks is complicated. So 82 matches for 4 months.... I can only imagine if there isnt a frame work.


My ideal solution would be to alternate the days and double / triple the number of matches a night for 1/3 - 1/2 the total match nights.

[Tarogato]

Why do we need tags at all? 0_o

What if one unit has enough members for two teams, and they both ordinarily share the same four-letter tag... because they are the same unit?

---

Also,

Dogmeat1, on 20 May 2016 - 04:24 PM, said:

c) limit game days to just once a week with a higher volume of games played. 2-3 hours once a week is far more reasonable than expecting people to be available every Thursday, Friday and Saturday for 3 months over Summer.

Edited by Tarogato, 20 May 2016 - 04:31 PM.

[ALKALIN3]

Paul Inouye, on 20 May 2016 - 03:57 PM, said:

I will update you all further on the schedule, why it is the way it is and how there *might* be a possible work around for timing of matches but that is going to have to be vetted before making a comment. This update will be on Tuesday (noon PDT) after all admin level people dealing with the tournament structure have been notified and submitted their opinions on the matter.

Just want you to know that no matter what the outcome on Tuesday is, we still have to burn through 11K+ matches and end in time for teams to make preparations for travel to the Finals. It is imperative that matches are completed in a timely manner in order to meet this deadline.

That being said, I will be proposing that matches can be played outside of the scheduled window of a match but has to be completed before the official scheduled match date/time. Of course more details will have to be fleshed out to make this work and I will update on the outcome of the meetings that are going to be required for this.

As for Team Tags, I see in Dirk's post above, Tags can be 1-4 characters in length. I'll have the web team update that in the information release.

Expanding rosters to 16 will help teams manage the shear amount of matches to be played as well. Is this in the realm of possibility?

[Karamarka]

Paul Inouye, on 20 May 2016 - 03:57 PM, said:

we still have to burn through 11K+ matches

lol

[TercieI]

Paul Inouye, on 20 May 2016 - 03:57 PM, said:

I will update you all further on the schedule, why it is the way it is and how there *might* be a possible work around for timing of matches but that is going to have to be vetted before making a comment. This update will be on Tuesday (noon PDT) after all admin level people dealing with the tournament structure have been notified and submitted their opinions on the matter.

Just want you to know that no matter what the outcome on Tuesday is, we still have to burn through 11K+ matches and end in time for teams to make preparations for travel to the Finals. It is imperative that matches are completed in a timely manner in order to meet this deadline.

That being said, I will be proposing that matches can be played outside of the scheduled window of a match but has to be completed before the official scheduled match date/time. Of course more details will have to be fleshed out to make this work and I will update on the outcome of the meetings that are going to be required for this.

As for Team Tags, I see in Dirk's post above, Tags can be 1-4 characters in length. I'll have the web team update that in the information release.

It needs to be radically changed not moderately softened. The idea that people will give up every weekend night for months for one to two drops possibly spaced out by hours is just silly. Seriously, consider individual intense nights (8 team mini round robins?). Those would be much easier for participants to manage. The current schedule will cause so many teams to (effectively or actually) drop out that the tournament will lose all legitimacy.

[Perfecto Oviedo]

I mean, I didn't want to have a social life for the next 4 months anyway...

[TercieI]

Perfecto Oviedo, on 20 May 2016 - 05:30 PM, said:

I mean, I didn't want to have a social life for the next 4 months anyway...

I just want to have a marriage after the next four months. Actually, I will have a marriage after the next four months. I'd hate to not play the tourney, but it's way less important than my marriage (and family and vacations and...).

[Deathlike]

TercieI, on 20 May 2016 - 05:56 PM, said:

I just want to have a marriage after the next four months. Actually, I will have a marriage after the next four months. I'd hate to not play the tourney, but it's way less important than my marriage (and family and vacations and...).

No, you can't have a life.

Sincerely,

Your Time.

[Shakespeare]

Most people I know play for a 2-4 hour session, once or twice a week, not only because the coordination required and match time is higher than most other online games, but because that's the sort of time block that people living adult lives can usually carve out of an evening. The return on investment is better for one long session vs a bunch of little ones. 'sorry, I've got to stay home/in town every weekend for a 1 hr match at precisely 8:30 or my team has no shot at the tournament' is crazy pants.

The more I think about it, the more irritated I get. What is this like 80 matches per team? All with the same map/mode? Where's the incentive to stick around if your w/L rate starts going South? How do I not want to kill myself after round 67?

And most importantly, did anyone consult with the other companies running 'e-sports' about how to handle the selection / seeding process? Surely the sheer number of matches demands something more flexible for the qualifiers.

What about a leaderboard? Or additional 'regional' stages? Or a freaking lotto?

Edited by Shakespeare, 20 May 2016 - 06:30 PM.

[MaxFool]

This is unreasonable. Everyone knows that starting side can be unfair, so what we need is double round robin with sides reversed for second meeting, that's the only competitively fair option.

[TercieI]

MaxFool, on 20 May 2016 - 06:39 PM, said:

This is unreasonable. Everyone knows that starting side can be unfair, so what we need is double round robin with sides reversed for second meeting, that's the only competitively fair option.

That's the part that bothers you?

(I don't disagree fundamentally but it's a comparatively minor issue IMO)

Edited by TercieI, 20 May 2016 - 06:42 PM.

[Panthros]

There is absolutely no reason to play so many matches. This is just craziness. There are teams and players that can be ranked, move them into regions or pools and let everyone play to move to the next round.

Even timezone's PGI. This is why PGI should not be running a tournament! They clearly have no experience and are not listening to people offering advice.

Edited by Panthros, 20 May 2016 - 06:56 PM.