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Hi, in my oppinion there could be a requirement to play say atleast 10 official matches during last 6 months with rikers/chesval player to be even invited to rikers/chesval. Its not really cool that old players from years back come to play just in chesval/rikers (im not much better example myself, but still saying) and then disappear, while the more new but maybe less skillful/unexperienced players who keep leagues alive just watch. So this way the players would have to earn the right to play in rikers/chesval, and maybe it even could increase some league activity. So 10 played offis in ducati for chesval, 10 in gu for rikers players. What do you think? Well atleast summer rikers/chesval could be like this, the winter ones would be kept as it is . The problem is though, can we track who playes how many offis and when with current systems...i think not.

With autoreport I think it's possible to track who's playing.
And personally, I think it's a good idea. I always try to follow that rule when designating captains for Chesval.

I think its a good idea. It does annoy me how a player who hasn't logged into BZ for half a year then suddenly appear 1 day before the cup to be a participant, and then only to become inactive immediately after the cup. Although, actually, the cups have done some good by bringing back a few players and increase activity. However, usually the players who stick around after the cup aren't active enough to give anything to the leagues.

By the way, you can track a player's activity easily through strayers BZstats and if you really needed to see if they matched, you could look through the match reports.

But I think the reason for having old/experienced players always play is
1) They are far better then the current 'pro'
2) They bring activity to older players who have contributed a lot
3) It keeps along with a retro/legend theme to the cup experience
4) Captains want their team to win and they would rather sacrifice activity/contribution to the leagues by playing newer players than to play old players who have won it for their teams in the past.

So it is kinda annoying for the new good players to have to watch and be excluded. But this problem is also why I have tried to start a new tournament cup for gu (silly cup). If its done right, it should bring activity and progress to the league by allowing everyone to compete. Same thing for the other many events such as 1vs1 tournaments.

I can see both sides of this issue:
Yes, it can be annoying to have an oldie show up right before a cup and play when they haven't contributed to league activity over the previous year.

On the flip side, having oldies come back generates activity, draws attention and excitement to see them play.
This was one euro's comment when I told them i was trying to get RB2 to come back and play:

please do! will be fun!

And yet both cups are tremendously competitive....each side wanting to win. I know for Chesval, both osta and I choose the captains & co....and try to help with lists, advice and such, but the bottom line of who plays/subs from the team, etc is the Capt/co-captain's decision. Each capt/co builds the kind of team they want and they bear the responsibility to choose the team they want.
Unfortunately, not everyone who is qualified skill wise, gets to play. BUT, there's always the summer Chesval to look forward to.

sillysir wrote:But I think the reason for having old/experienced players always play is
1) They are far better then the current 'pro'

The NA Riker team of 2013 had a lot of veterans. They mostly just blew up in insignificant skirmishes shedding off their layers of rust but still having plenty remaining by the end.

I didn't see a lot of vets in their prime, but personally I suspect the trend is:

• There used to be way more pros, though the standard was not very high.
• There are fewer pros reaching the same standard as that generation due to the lessening player base. We don't look like much now and yet our average pros (semi-active and active) are probably better than theirs at their peak.

My basis is that there was a vast semi-underground network of resentment against improving players from older players especially around when I joined GU.

The NA Riker team 2014 had much less vets and more active players. One thing we can say is that they played closer to their best than the 2013 team did.

osta wrote:With autoreport I think it's possible to track who's playing.
And personally, I think it's a good idea. I always try to follow that rule when designating captains for Chesval.

Well, preferring active players is sort of against the rikercup idea as far as I understand. It's about "the best of the best" and not about granting good, active players the chance to participate for keeping the league alive. However I'm a fan of promoting activity so I'm looking into this.

The website part of autoreport needs to have a datastructure added to support participants; this also needs code to read out the values. Autoreport script of website needs to be re-coded because of inline-sql. Maybe also a good time to add encryption and validation against attacks.

I'm struggling a bit about datastructure..hopefully this can be sorted out soon.

Changing Datastructure is not a big deal. But could be a problem for matches added manually, and, especially, subs.

Anyway. I agree the general rule for Rikers and ChesVal is to play best, but what's the main goal? For me, is to increase activity and interests.
So, that's why we generally choose different captains each time for ChesVal, mostly basing on lastest activity and skill improvement.
IK, there is no rule to have @ as a co-captain on duc, so it's somehow easier

And about veterans. I don't mind them to play, in fact, it's nice to see them playing again. But personally, as a captain, I'd try to get them to play at least a little before the match (lets say few weeks), during some fms and trainings.
Personally, I'll have some concerns about letting them play without that. Why?
1. Cause trainings increase activity
2. cause they playing trainings earlier increase the chance they'll return than a one-time event
3. Cause other players could see the 'oldies' and learn something new.
4. And according to 3rd point, other designated players could compare they skills and efforts and think that maybe it's not so unjust to let veterans play.

Really think this an awful idea. While the older players generally have a lot rust, they tend to know the game much better and have better teamplay. My example would be kris. He barely plays now besides Rikers but I don't think anyone would argue that he is one of the best euro players. Removing a lot of good players would also remove interest for other good players because the match wouldn't have quite the same high level of play attached to it. The point of Rikers is for the best to play the best, not to reward activity.

Yea, as annoying as it is and how it doesn't seem fair, I still think the best of the best should play, not the most active.

We have to remember that when these cups were created, there was a lot of activity and a lot of big competition. The original idea/goal of both cups were to have a friendly competition with one another to see who can be the best. It was about skill. And although I was not in the leagues at the time of the creation, I have heard from many. The original idea was brought up by regular players, it had nothing to do with the administration team.

However, I think we can all say that over the years, the leagues have decreased activity and competition, but these cups have continued to be the one event everyone, old and new, pro and noob, wants to come participate in. As a result, these cups have increased activity. So activity is an outcome, not the goal.

I do wonder why so many old players tend to be better than the current best player. But I think this just goes to the "new era" of bz, a new generation. Perhaps, if the leagues are still around in 5 years, the same thing will happen.

Kenshin wrote:While the older players generally have a lot rust, they tend to know the game much better and have better teamplay. My example would be kris. He barely plays now besides Rikers but I don't think anyone would argue that he is one of the best euro players.

Kris retired like 2 years ago. I'm thinking more like the players who retired 7 years ago but still played in Riker 2013, veterans whose playing time is literally 100% the time during the Riker matches. In comparison Kris is not 7 years rusty and he "existed" as a player outside of Riker.

osta wrote:Changing Datastructure is not a big deal. But could be a problem for matches added manually, and, especially, subs.

My problem with the datastructure is that I not only want to support matches with two parties (e.g. red vs. purple) but also events where several teams participate (e.g. race results). There must also be an API…not sure what to use. I am considering REST, XML-RPC and SOAP as possible candidates.

Manual entering matches must also include substitutes and playing time, either percentage or absolute value.

Why would you abuse yourself with XML? Use JSON.

As has been said by other, Rikers/Chesval is meant for "the best of the best" it might not be the best idea to take that way. But what about introducing a tournament that is like Rikers specifically designed for a wide range of player skills. That way we wouldn't have to worry about taking away the only incentive for our more skilled inactive players to come back every once and a while. and we would still be bringing in activity from those who aren't quite good enough!

psycho wrote:As has been said by other, Rikers/Chesval is meant for "the best of the best" it might not be the best idea to take that way. But what about introducing a tournament that is like Rikers specifically designed for a wide range of player skills. That way we wouldn't have to worry about taking away the only incentive for our more skilled inactive players to come back every once and a while. and we would still be bringing in activity from those who aren't quite good enough!

Isn't this what sillycup is attempting?
Why isn't it supported by more gu players?????

kierra wrote:

psycho wrote:As has been said by other, Rikers/Chesval is meant for "the best of the best" it might not be the best idea to take that way. But what about introducing a tournament that is like Rikers specifically designed for a wide range of player skills. That way we wouldn't have to worry about taking away the only incentive for our more skilled inactive players to come back every once and a while. and we would still be bringing in activity from those who aren't quite good enough!

Isn't this what sillycup is attempting?
Why isn't it supported by more gu players?????

I have been wondering that myself. I have been telling everyone about the silly cup and trying to get more and more to join. And I'm not sure why some people don't want to participate in the silly cup, but a few players have said they didn't want to play with people who wouldn't take it seriously.

So, perhaps, the fact that the riker/chesval cup is so exclusive, makes it so much more important. The players in the cups are completely serious when playing and try their best to help their team. And perhaps because its so exclusive, people want to be part of it even more.

Yes! like what silly is doing, also maybe the GU admins could organize a set of 10v10 fm's every once and a while that anyone (not just the best of the best) can join in on.

Do you really need gu admins to organize a 10 vs 10 (or greater) on a semi routine basis?

You can decide whether you want to do it weekly, every 2 weeks, or monthly. Take a poll amongst players and pick a weekend day, designate a time and say come one, come all.
Post it on these forums, ask an admin to put it on the news page and then advertise using your motto, gu league group on facebook, and word of mouth. All it takes is initiative. It's what SillySir did with SillyCup.

Somebody, decide date/time you want to do this and I'll post it for you on news page.

Little off topic here, but what happened to last tank standing events, they were cool and quick....ducati one would be nice, why not gu too.

I've suggested LTS before for hix map. Most say that it will just be players camping.

I liked it with ducati and babel maps

The LTS plugin is being retooled by allejo.

Why does it have to be retooled? i thought recent version of bz had that plugin already.

ahs3 has LTS Ducati style running on bzbg 4949 on list server.
We tested it out a few days ago.

Thank you, ahs3!

jh^ wrote:i thought recent version of bz had that plugin already.

Unless I'm confused, I see no "LTS" or "Last Tank Standing" plugin in the official source. I do see KOTH, but I think that's more of a "control a point" thing.

Maybe its not on official source, but its working in some servers because i just played a game of lts tonite.

blast wrote:Why would you abuse yourself with XML? Use JSON.

JSON would be the way to go. The current version of League Overseer uses JSON to retrieve information about teams, wouldn't be too hard to record joins/parts and submit the JSON data.

jh^ wrote:Maybe its not on official source, but its working in some servers because i just played a game of lts tonite.

It was "retooled" so players are no longer kicked when eliminated but instead swapped to the observer team and I believe the original version of the LTS plugin was not open source either. Chances are the servers you're playing on are using my version of the plugin: BZBattleground and BZAddict. It's not in the official source but it is here.

As a retooling idea since you doing it: someone mentioned something which i thought was good idea: when there are 5 ppl left in game, scores would be reset, or when there are 30% left scores reset...maybe last one is better. That would make it bit different for sure, maybe it could be optional add? Like you could run the plugin or start the game with or without it.