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I just want to ask a short question:

Am I the only one who gets really annoyed by new team foundings and deletings on a daily basis? Especially by the same 2 or 3 people?

I think its normal and happens that someone founds a new team or abandons his membership in his actual team. But it really bothers me if this happens on a daily or weekly basis. I dont find it usefull, it only makes problems.

Cant this be restricted to not more than one or two teamchanges / month? Or a short period in which you cant join or found another team after leaving one?

This is not only an annoying problem, it prevent new players from joining the Gu-League or staying in Gu-League-Teams. Teams should help new players to learn tactics and have fun playing. But deleting a team only because its lost its first match is babyish. And the new players dont know how to deal with it.

I haven't seen this is a "big" problem ... yet. But the limits you want to impose would be difficult to implement, because those players determined to do it will always find ways to do it. It is common sense that you dont make a new team every day, but, let's face it, some people have an awkward common sense. Same applies to player name changes.

i dont see it as a problem. it is not affecting your team.. so why bother.

@Zac:
It is affecting my team. Otherwise I wouldnt be annoyed that much.
2 examples:

You look up strayer to find a match, and while official matching, you get a "btw, forget to say, we arent anymore in the same team". I know, strayer is always nearly a day behind, but its no fun to check every time you try to find a matchable team in the GU-League Teampage if this player is still in the team or if the team still exists.

We had it more than once that we report a draw or a win (yes, sometimes it "happens" to us too), and the team isnt anymore, so we dont get points (we play for the fun, but if we win, the points have been hard work). Deleting a team because the first match wasnt a win is
In my opinion, it is disrespectfull and casts a bad light on the League.
I dont think its necessary to have here a strict rule, but it wouldnt be the worst thing, if the GU-League-Administration would say to those: "Hey, we dont find it that good, founding new teams every day." It is still a League. Otherwise, there is no need to make official matches.

I completely agree with red-der here. I'm not going to say any names, but there is specific group of players who find it amusing (or due to a bad reputation?) to change callsigns/Teamnames or delete and make new teams on a daily basis. This is a big problem for new players. Somebody who has just joined the league is easily confused by the constant changing. It's impossible to get used to things if everything is constantly changing. "Hey, where's that team we matched last night?"
Even regulars can't keep up with all the changes. Frequently people ask "who is that..?" or "what team is that?".
I don't think that setting up a rule is the right thing to do, but it might be helpful if the admins talked to some of the people (there really is a select group) who change names and teams daily. All they're doing is casting a bad light on the league, like red-der said. Completely unnecessary, imo.

I did not say I am satisfied with it, I strongly dislike it. I am one of those who have joined only 3 different GU teams in 4 years and I have played with BaRbarians in ducati for 5 years. That we need to address the problem by talking with the group of players concerned, that is for sure. But implementing some league code to avoid it seems to me ineffective.

Just wanted to clarify my post.

And to clarify my post, too:


>> But implementing some league code to avoid it seems to me ineffective >>

It wasnt my intention to do this by code. That would only mean a lot of work and could easily be bypassed. But why not restrict this by the rules? The rules are there to establish a working league system and this interferes with it. And so it is in the GU-League-Admins interest and up to them how to deal with this.

I agree with dexter here. If it is indeed a select group of people doing this, the admins should just talk to them and tell them to stop; if not there could be consequences. If they are doing it solely for the purpose of distorting the league system, that's quite enough reason for the admins to take action. By making a rule, it just complicates things for the legit people.

To further add to this, when a new team is created it changes their previous rating. This is not that big of a matter as a whole, but it does offset how normal scoring would work. I think the reasons supplied are good enough, though.

to be honestt i am really not sure who people are talikng about. i have a strange feeling i might be one of them...
and this is the reason. my first team (burning tanks) had no members at all. then i got some cool tankart from zaphod and a few people said they would think about joining. but no one did

so i shut it down again, then after joining KK i left for an hour and started another team. (dunno why)

so if its me your talking about, then i apologise. i did not, however play any matches with these teams. except one and i lost.

Uhh, we made it quite clear what we're talking about. I for one, am not referring to you as an example. I said I would not name anyone but if the admins want to know who these people are, they can just ask pretty much everyone out there that has to deal with these players.

Yeah, I thought it was clear too.
Zac, you are not the one we are talking about.

Another result of all this team/callsign changing, are empty teams lead by bots. There seem to be several teams with one player/bot in them that are cluttering the team list. Really unnecessary.. if you must make a new team, at least delete the old one so it doesn't just idle in the hands of a bot.

Ooops, that was me. I had to add a dummy player to enter a match that they played right before deleting the team

....... and this problem continues....

One Team was founded and deleted more than 3 times in the last 3 days.... (I still will not name the players). They match a team, loose it and do the re with the now founded new team with the same players...

That really annoys me and my teammates. We try to play good and increase our elo-rating by playing fair and good. But we are new and loose most of our matches (and dont bother), so getting back to the starting elo-rating is not easy - its hard work!

But why do we this if others just delete and refound their team? We do it for the fun playing, but some of us (not only our team) begin to loose interest in a League. And that affects all GU-Players.

And more... some new GU-Players dont play anymore because after deleting their team, they dont know what happend and why. It cant be that they have to join teams on a daily basis.

I see it that way:
There arent that much new players joining the league, and some players leave. If the GU-League Administration really wants a healthy and growing League, they have to do something. I dont know what to do, but thats not my call.

The problem is that some of us cannot be there everyday. There are probably a few teams created and deleted again where for example I am not even aware they existed at all.
I really appreciate that you pointed us to this problem without naming people. It shows the general level of the GU League player base, and the standard is pretty high, luckily.
But if the team creation and deletion becomes a problem caused by only a small selection of players, naming those players may help.
It may help for other players to think twice before matching them, and also helps the admins to know who to talk to.
The problem is that personally I am a bit reluctant to formulate hard rules against team deletion. There may be valid reasons for a recently created team to be dismissed again. Unfortunately this seems to be abused by some. I think we still need to think of a good way to handle this.
Referees and Admins being asked to enter matches where a team is involved that has been deleted, suffer a lot from this. It takes a lot of time to enter such a match and have the reporting team get the points they deserve.
An update of the league code that allows to enter matches for deleted teams would already help a lot. But though this will ease the burden on the Referees, it won't cure the problem.

It is a good start to have a public debate that shows that the league in general frowns upon such behavior. And I think I would also encourage in-game comments of disapproval when matching such a team, to make them aware that we think it is a problem.

If I or another Referee would know who to talk to about this we could also help in spreading the awareness on how we think a team should be led. I am hoping we can get to a solution that way before we consider formulating rules on how long a player has to stay on a team or else be banned.

I think a good solution would to make team deletions something that a league admin could do, with a good justification.

Another thing that might be useful is some kind of activity log that admins can read that shows recent activity (such as team creation/deletion/joining/leaving/etc). phpBB3 has nice logs like that and it really comes in handy.

Maybe that fits in here:
Yesterday I (Team EiE) matched against Team basic. We won and they were up for a rematch. Therefore we agreed and matched them again. However they beat us in a fair way. What we didn't knew was, that they dismissed their team in between our two matches and created a new one (Moonlight). Therefore the "re"-match wasn't really a re and the won and lost points where different from what they would have been if they didn't dismissed and found in between. I thought THAT was really annoying
wfg Monster

Monster wrote:Maybe that fits in here:
Yesterday I (Team EiE) matched against Team basic. We won and they were up for a rematch. Therefore we agreed and matched them again. However they beat us in a fair way. What we didn't knew was, that they dismissed their team in between our two matches and created a new one (Moonlight). Therefore the "re"-match wasn't really a re and the won and lost points where different from what they would have been if they didn't dismissed and found in between. I thought THAT was really annoying
wfg Monster

That was a very bad behaviour indeed. We have fixed those results and the second match (that you lost) was declared null for the reasons you explained. We have also talked and warned the people involved. As foo said, if this behaviour persists it will lead to bans.

This team changing, deleting and founding is really a big problem. And there are always the same players involved. Some days ago i had to report one match, where one of the playing teams was deleted. Foo had to do the whole work, because some people think they can do what they want. It's really annoying and should be stopped. New rules, or bad warnings, or i don't know...Something MUST happen. There are so many annoyed players, who are leaving or getting inactive because of such crap. And this team changing/deleting/founding is really no help for players who are new and need help. I can't see the big deal when someone lose a match. Deleting the team only because you lost a match is really nasty and unfair. Make one team with active players and play, the time will come when you will get better.

Thanks a lot for your quick reaction qt
wfg Monster

Should be some kind of reasonable limit to the number of new team creates by one individual. That will cut down. As is -- it's really easy to manipulate the scoring system by colluding with other teams, creating a team, playing, deleteting the team, and then joining the team that you let beat you. Sure this whole thing is pretty much the honor system but restrictions on team creates would be good. Plus it would create more famiilarity with the teams. I don't think anyone is exploiting the team system intentionally but I know it was done before and those players were banned. Some maybe doing it now unintentionally.

Real simple solution -- 1 team create per person per year. Problem fixed.

smoooth

smoooth wrote:Should be some kind of reasonable limit to the number of new team creates by one individual. That will cut down. As is -- it's really easy to manipulate the scoring system by colluding with other teams, creating a team, playing, deleteting the team, and then joining the team that you let beat you. Sure this whole thing is pretty much the honor system but restrictions on team creates would be good. Plus it would create more famiilarity with the teams. I don't think anyone is exploiting the team system intentionally but I know it was done before and those players were banned. Some maybe doing it now unintentionally.

Real simple solution -- 1 team create per person per year. Problem fixed.

smoooth

Common sense and honest conduct should suffice. We do not like over ruling every little aspect. There are always reasonable and legitimate exceptions to a rule and we prefer to allow more flexibility. Team creation with intention to affect the ladder will be punished. That should be enough to let people know it is considered an offence.

I think we've all agreed that this one-day-per-team situation is something that will not be tolerated by the community and will be severely punished by the admins. I also agree that setting some general rule is not the way to go. As qd pointed out, there will always be situations, where teams should be able to be deleted or new ones created.
As long as the admins stay on top of this problem and take the time to speak with the people doing this, we shouldn't need any specific rules.