A new matching variant for GU league

[blast]

Bottom Line, Can we make this thread a Poll? Perhaps with 3 options like 'yes', 'no' and 'maybe/would like to pursue the idea' ?

No.

[Snake12534]

My, my. For someone who just registered today, you know an awful lot about what's going around BZFlag. I mean, really? You've met brad, Zac, and the GU league teams in less than a day? I am very impressed, my friend. Oh, where are my manners, welcome to BZFlag! As per your comment of me getting banned, I suggest you retract it since the only people who have ever wanted me banned are people with no admin powers anywhere (i.e. Dazzling124, sanctified, Snake12534). Furthermore, I would prefer to see more comments from players who have actually been playing GU, I don't see why we should take your post seriously since you aren't even part of the GU league spawn list.

P.S. I don't play much but that doesn't mean I don't help out

Edit: Oh my apologies for not noticing this was a second callsign for you. If you already know BZFlag, you'd know that is GU is far from extinction. And if you know the community well, I don't see why you'd take a shot at me saying I was banned

I would never want you ban allejo You helped me with some map making stuff

[An SQUERRILz]

The only reason I am repeating this is because I feel as though it got lost in the discussion and a couple of people have agreed with at least the theory of it. Why not just say, players can match against whoever they want as an official match, it just won't count for nearly as many points/elo as normal official matches. For example: Myself and plasma kaz (as both members of the team BZB) cannot find a match. We sit around and wait but none come. So we ask around, "would any two people like to official match us?" For the sake of discussion, let's say dexter and hurricane are around. They agree to an official match, even though they are not on the same team. So it is effectively BZB vs dexter/hurricane or BZB vs players. Say BZB lost, so we would lose 2 points. Say BZB won, so we would win 2 points. These points gained/lost are regardless of any player strength, it is a set number (naturally, the number can be whatever is decided on). Dexter/hurricane would gain or lose no points, just like in a normal fm. However, it would be a much more competitive match than a normal fm.

This idea would:
1. Increase activity
2. Not pollute the ELO pool (1 or 2 points per win/loss would not make a difference, as red-der's earlier graph points out)
3. Keep competitiveness
4. Choice of teams would remain in the players' hands
5. Require less and easier coding

I would like to hear the cons of this idea, because the idea maker can never think of them themselves. This was just my best try at thinking of a solution that can be considered something like that of a compromise. I can definitely appreciate what red-der is trying to do with his idea, but I'm worried there are just too many cons right now. However, whatever is decided on will have my support, and I will do my best to offer my opinions whenever I can.

The objections and pitfalls of red-der's initial proposal are not going to disappear. There are two alternative suggestions I'd like to point draw out.
1. Have the two teams in a separate system (but supposedly "GU-council-supported")
2. Players have their individual statistics tracked in a more match which is basically an "official funmatch" - from the old/dead funmatch league.
3. No one mentioned this, but a monthly cup based on how many matches, caps, flag saves, etc.

My thoughts on these are not necessary at this point. I have however held those ideas for more than a year.

Firstly, slime has a good summary/example of "the moot point that most people can probably accept/agree/relate to". Along with this claim I say to cut out the other wibbly wobbly timey wimey mentioned moot points:
1. "No teams are on, so no one gets to offi. Wouldn't it be nice if there could be an offi?" No, because offi's mean something. If not even one team is actually a team, then it's just a serious FM. The effect of writing it on paper doesn't make it "offi material..." - e.g. you look up the match logs and it says Team A beat Team B 3-1. You don't feel anything. Being loyal to a team is difficult enough, being loyal to half the players is not right. While the idea of more recorded matches has potential good, the particular framing of what would be FMs as offi's should be put aside because it is not going to happen without necessarily degrading the value of offi's.
2. Based on the previous point, there should not be two league teams in the official ladder. If there are going to be two league teams, it had better be a separate ladder.

My actual criticism of slime's idea:
His proposal is more palate-able to me than other versions, but all the original counterarguments are still there:
First point of discussion is "Dexter/hurricane would gain or lose no points, just like in a normal fm. However, it would be a much more competitive match than a normal fm."
1. So it is exactly like an fm but not only is it recorded and counts for points for BZB, by some non-descript psychological enchantment, dexter/hurricane take the match as seriously as if it were an offi. They would curse/rage as necessary just like in an offi. I will give this some validity since dexter/hurricane gets the opportunity to lower BZB rating, however there are some scenarios that are not quite like that and may incur some off-remarks. For example Frank and I are going to "offi" against Dead Turtle and etigah (not same team) because in my timezone, if Loki isn't on then the "1-team offi" is usually in our favor just because of the players online at that time. If no one is concerned about that, then the suggestion of 2-point win/loss seems purely "honorary". No one cares about 2 points, but they care that the match is recorded? I don't claim to know what people care about, and there's nothing wrong with caring about different things. Just from my view the practicality of this solution looks thread-bare.
Winloss change is high enough for people to care => good, lots more offi matches. Just that Ice (and probably most other teams) will get naturally get free points. The more active teams get inflated, the inactive do not. (Technically this can be desirable in design, but the elo is already in place).
Winloss change is not high enough for people to care but somehow just the match being recorded and the opportunity to play with a teammate is more valued than fairer teams and practice value => Offi, Ice vs teamless. This just doesn't "strike the match" for me; unbalanced offi's are often not worth the time regardless of points.
Winloss change is not high enough for people to care and not the above => then it will be an FM, Frank/eti vs sq/dt, to maximise practice by balancing the teams.

Basically, I do not understand how "having a competitive FM vs dex/hurri" does not solve your problem. Either you want the thrill of points or being on record, no matter how much it counts, or for some reason dex/hurri does not have an incentive to match you hence points will give them that incentive, or they do want to match you, but they also want to help BZB get more official matches either to give you points or lower your 3000th match countdown.

In my opinion, the motives behind the proposals are important. Some of the supporters of the variant probably just want a yes/no response, and while they support a discussion, they may be afraid to explain plainly why they support one design decision over another. Players have different motives, and if we never ask about them, then the supporters will just group up and say "look at how many of us there are", which is not a representative approach.

slime, how does your proposal benefit you more than simply FMing against dex/hurri? You claim it would increase activity (for which I assume FMs already count as activity), so I infer that currently you would not be sufficiently motivated to FM against dex/hurri, or they would not be motivated to FM against you. So what changes that suddenly you would be matching?

[slime]

Thanks for the thought-out reply Trait. Also, before I begin, if red-der or anyone else would rather this discussion over an alternate idea doesn't take place in this thread, I apologize, will stop, and let you continue your discussion on your own well-thought-out idea.

Offi, Ice vs teamless. This just doesn't "strike the match" for me

I understand what you mean. Perhaps the code could be changed (this entire discussion is relying on the fact that this can and will be coded by someone) for when entering a match, an individual player name can be entered, i.e. BZB vs dexter, hurricane 6-3. That'd be incentive enough for most (imo) to try their hardest, and to do this 'official' match in the first place. This would even add another layer to official matches, because up until now there has been no way of knowing who on a team played in the match. Including player names could be optional when reporting/entering a match. Also, no need to get complicated and add player-specific ELO's to the mix (it would be cool, but I doubt plausible).

Points for wins/losses can be changed from 2 to 5 or even 10 if more cause for this 'official' match is needed. Yes, the more active teams would get inflated (although remember, the official team would not always win the points, so deflation would occur as well, just not as often). Also, if I understand correctly, in red-der's initial proposal the lower ranked teams would get the big inflation boost while the higher ranked teams have more of a chance for deflation to occur, yes? (considering that Team A and Team B are included in the ladder).

I feel as though much of this would be easier to envision if GU League had some amenities such as automatic match reporting (could send team and/or player names to site) or player-based ELO.

[MHE BCE PABHO]

I support this

[blast]

Maybe I'm over simplifying this, but is the TL;DR of red-der's idea just to give the appearance of more activity by artificially inflating the 'official' match counts through some psuedo-team matches?

I support this

"This" being what, exactly? Multiple ideas have been suggested here. So what exactly do you support, and why?

[Jim]

Hello,

I'm in favor of this variant.

---------

The problem with the way things are now is:

Most of the time, it is not a likely situation to sign-on and shortly find a match to play in which there is a sense of competition and a certain amount of pressure; pressure that provides the opportunity for the most fun - banding together as a team and defeating the opposition.

For many players, the description above is what is expected of an official match.

Red’s proposition enhances our organization and provides us more frequent opportunities for this experience. Official matches containing one or more of the two “league-teams” will contain all of the excitements we expect of a so-called match.

Our ranking system surely affords us the opportunity for this caliber of experience and I believe that any team expectant of that must be ranked.

---------

Believe me, I love my fun matches. My expectations of official and fun matches can contrast significantly. I know that there are many players who seek a low-pressure experience in a fun match.

So, I don’t agree with the argument that red’s variant could only provide glorified fun matches. For me, the criteria he describes for his design details an official match in every sense.

----------

I can’t speak to many of the more technical aspects raised about the variant or its implementation at this time. That said, my gut feeling after reading all of the posts in this topic is that:

1) This variant will be successful in its mission.

2) It is worth it. The validity of the concerns expressed regarding the details of this variant’s composition or implementation are NEGLIGIBLE and pale in comparison to the opportunities we shall be provided from this new system.

I recommend we do this and I am willing to do as much as I can to help make this happen. Thanks to red and all those participating in the discussion.

-Jim

[brad]

Can't honestly say I read every word, but I think I get the general idea here (and I remember the bzmb variant too)

I don't like it, I don't see the point of it at all as I will feel absolutely no loyalty to the random team it will be exactly like a FM. It will even make it harder to arrange a "FM" as you'll have players waiting in obs unable to participate.

Just my two pence.

[etigah]

Hi, this is post #1

We need better funmatches I think , but the proposed idea will give us worse offis instead.
A separate 2-5 teams fun league with more structurally stable team layout would work out better IMO

Why not send a msg for all players to participate in such a league. Then let 2-5 chosen captains start picking players from the pool of players who accepted. The resulting teams will have a sense of loyalty knowing they were not chosen randomly. Works great when done on the spot.

[figurines]

I feel that people need to embrace the community aspect of bzflag/guleague/league play.

A proposal to split players 50/50 pink/red team (in the most barebones way without discussing details that are, in my opinion, impossible to predict until implementation) will not limit competitive play in any way but the numbers itself. Personally the league is not about Elo/Sceeelo or whatever other "i'm better than you" system exists. In fact, I would argue, this proposal could make your matches MORE competitive.

How?

You can choose to match difficult players or easier players to satisfy your competitive or non-competitive side. Do I care if other teams wish to waste 30 minutes matching easy teams...is that really fun(this already happens)? To me, no (okay i admit it can be), but to some perhaps. If you want to prove your own skill take some time to prove it to yourself and not worry about if the rest of us can see your "score" rise. I think this could also allow players who wish to test their skills a better way to do this. For example (and I will use my own team) redder + fig vs team pink and lets say there are lots of team pink members on, but also some "weaker" teams (which is everyone since we're the best). We decide to test ourselves and match Slamm (Rainbow) and Brad (ForestForce), who are both on team pink, as opposed to matching a weaker GU team.
Let's say that redder + fig do this and Slamm + Brad goof around the whole time and the match isn't taken seriously (not that they would EVER do this)...guess who we will NOT ask to match next time. Intelligent, easy solutions to many problems that arise from a change of this manner.

This format would require that players work together as a community to have, not only established teams (tfg, ff, otl etc.), but to work together to supply those teams with fair, competitive (not too easy nor hard), and frequent matches.

I would rather there always be enough teams to match against, but due to lowered activity this is simply not a reality. I do not want to undermine the competitive aspect of the league, but it is more important that we make the league more appealing to newer players and also improve activity...as older/moreexperienced players we WILL be sacrificing things to do this. For instance we may be giving up the "eloschmeelo" numbers system, but is it so hard to check on the "matches" page to see who beat who (and perhaps the matches could list the ACTUAL players involved and a section for players to comment on quality of match etc.). Ex: fig + redder (tfg) winvs brad + slamm (Teampink) 10-0 (of course) and PJ Comments: “What an amazing match to watch, fig is the the best player ever he totally was a pro and kicked their butt”.

In this way I would hope for players to create a competitive community where EVERYONE can not only find matches within their skill range, but also find them frequently. Also this might get players talking about how x and x beat y and y as opposed to just looking at these numbers that, truthfully, don't tell us much about anything.

This definitely means that older/moreexperienced players will be giving things up like “eloschmelo” to make a concerted effort to attract new players and increase match activity ACROSS the board.

As a league we have to admit to ourselves that our player base is growing smaller every year. I have, for years now, quietly proposed ideas to certain people on how to increase activity and recruitment always the response being “who will do the coding for this idea” and also “start a forum topic”. I for one am willing to jump on someones offer to attempt do this in a sensible way.

Sure there will be problems, but we can handle these problems as we go along-we won’t be able to anticipate every problem, but many of them will have simple solutions such as creating your own competition by matching WHOM you want , challenging yourself-creating a community that values competition, new players etc.

The league will not be going back anytime soon to it’s “active” days when there were lots of teams on 5v5 matches frequently (compared to today) etc. Recognizing this as a player base is very important and if we can agree on nothing other than this we have still made progress...

Lots of the complaints of this type of change is that it is “no different from a fm”, but how is an Offi any different than a fm other than that we acknowledge certain players are playing and playing to stomp the other team into the ground. 30 minutes of timed play is as serious as we make it and it counts only as serious as we wish it to be.

I don’t have a strong way to conclude this except please do not say what is WRONG with this proposal, but address that this proposal is trying to solve problems that exist within the league...problems that WILL eventually lead to it’s downfall.

I am willing to give it a try because it will NOT hurt the league unless we let it. If we approach this with the right attitude...that of community strengthening we can accomplish and strengthen something we all love.

[benji 13]

Offi, Ice vs teamless. This just doesn't "strike the match" for me

I understand what you mean. Perhaps the code could be changed (this entire discussion is relying on the fact that this can and will be coded by someone) for when entering a match, an individual player name can be entered, i.e. BZB vs dexter, hurricane 6-3. That'd be incentive enough for most (imo) to try their hardest, and to do this 'official' match in the first place. This would even add another layer to official matches, because up until now there has been no way of knowing who on a team played in the match. Including player names could be optional when reporting/entering a match. Also, no need to get complicated and add player-specific ELO's to the mix (it would be cool, but I doubt plausible).

Points for wins/losses can be changed from 2 to 5 or even 10 if more cause for this 'official' match is needed. Yes, the more active teams would get inflated (although remember, the official team would not always win the points, so deflation would occur as well, just not as often). Also, if I understand correctly, in red-der's initial proposal the lower ranked teams would get the big inflation boost while the higher ranked teams have more of a chance for deflation to occur, yes? (considering that Team A and Team B are included in the ladder).

I feel as though much of this would be easier to envision if GU League had some amenities such as automatic match reporting (could send team and/or player names to site) or player-based ELO.

I personally would support the modified version by slime.
For me as the leader of a team created for training players it would be a welcome benefit to have the option to do official matches when there's right now not the possibility to do them. In FMs teams are usually mixed up and trying to organize e.g. a "3 Apocs vs other players" - fm is always a struggle, also when new observers come and just hop in without asking.
Having the opportunity of doing Offis against random players would give us more options to train on 2s/3s/4s/5vs5s under offi-conditions.
Giving these offis the value of +-5 points would be a fair solution I think, and there would be more sense in even entering them (I wouldn't be happy having lots of matches entered worth 1 or 2 points).

But to comment on the often mentioned criticism about the incentive for the random players or loyalty to the random team it might be an option to have player statistics, probably like An Squerril mentioned:

3. No one mentioned this, but a monthly cup based on how many matches, caps, flag saves, etc.

The problem here will be though, that you can't enter the amount of flag saves in match. So it might have to be reduced to statistics for wins/losses; caps; activity
Activity should get in this regard a special impact, to avoid having too many players doing only those offis when knowing they're going to win it for having better personal stats.
I still have concerns about subs, but since they agree to offi it shouldn't be an option for the random team to get subs, so it also wouldn't interfere with the individual stats (how do I enter a match against BZB played by me and brad when I get subbed in the middle by a newbie?)


In general I'm glad about having an ongoing discussion here, showing some signs of life.

[Wayney]

Firstly, thanks to K for pointing some of us to the thread. Very interesting discussion going on here.

Undoubtedly, all of us here are all for increasing the number of official matches taking place. However, I agree with blast's comment [and] that this proposal is not the way to do it.

Maybe I'm over simplifying this, but is the TL;DR of red-der's idea just to give the appearance of more activity by artificially inflating the 'official' match counts through some psuedo-team matches?

I think this is exactly what the implementation of this proposal would demonstrate.

I've been around for years and I know what it's like to sit on the sidelines waiting for official matches if I'm in a very competitive mood. The problem would not be resolved by assigning me to Red or Purple, and matching in these league-teams. That is after all the same as getting four (similarly skilled) players to join in Auto and play a FM. I mean, effectively, by making Red and Purple exist as league-teams and rotating players within them weekly, monthly, annually, or whateverly, you're basically coming up with a statistic of which colour tends to win a match. And I don't know about you, but I expect this to be 50-50 (give-or-take).

So I'm really struggling to see how the proposal really results in an "official" match. To resolve this point, I think players must be assigned PERMANENTLY(*) to Red or Purple.

Now with that said, do we want two teams Red and Purple to be on the same league ladder? I wouldn't be so against it now, assuming the player assignment is permanent. However, the option of say, two loki randomly assigned to Red and two loki randomly assigned to Purple "officially" matching eachother as Red vs Purple doesn't sound particularly attractive to me. I'd enjoy this as a FM, as I believe would be true for other teams, so would probably prefer player assignment also not be entirely random, but somewhat based on current team, such as Loki are Red, BZB are Purple, etc, keeping it a fairly even assignment. Here's where the asterisk comes in. If a player switches actual team, they also move to that team's league-team status as either Red or Purple. This of course might not have any effect or could result in a switch.

So if something like this were implemented, those would be my main concerns.

BUT, my original point was going to be, as others have said, why fix something that isn't broken? I feel that if some people in particular find it so frustrating to wait around for an official match, then work together to make the league better in other ways, as have already been suggested. Moving to more active teams for your timezones. Helping to create teams that you could match in those timezones. As a community, it is more feasible to make these smaller changes than implement a new proposal such as this one.

Also, I have become quite happy with playing FMs if I come online to find no teammate. These are a lot of fun! (though can be ruined if unreliable players are involved) There is also the opportunity to have more competitive FMs, if you want to be competitive. If you have no mate online, you could FM with a friend vs Dex and Hurri, as in a previous example. I don't understand why not being able to enter this as an "official" or "recorded" match would make this less competitive.

So anyway, I strongly oppose. But as you have wished, I have added constructive criticism.

I agree with slime that this could do away with the bonds of your actual teammates, and for that reason I would love to see this idea incorporated just more so as secondary/intro league. I think the only way to see success in this is to make it optional, say I know I have a couple hours today where I can play some matches, I simply go to the "Free match" tab (or whatever you want to call it) and click "Put me in a team", and I'll randomly be added to team one or team two and I can match for the day or however long I please. Then the teams will be randomized, rinse and repeat.

As a side note, I am interested in you expanding on this idea, ducky. "Put me in a team for the evening and let's see what happens!" - I am intrigued.

[Irrefutable]

I love the idea because there are lots of players on teams with different time zones so they are only on at a specific time like when ppl are going to bed. Also I like how it changes every so often You can learn how to work with different people and how they play just an amazing idea it should deffinately happen

[crazy pal pig]

I would oppose this variant, though for a different reason than the others have. I feel that, yes, this measure might promote more official matches, and there might indeed increase activity among the higher-level players, but I think it would ultimately kill the league. Let me explain. As Fig more or less said, players will want to match people around their own level, but that leads to something highly unfavorable. High-skill players will play against high-skill players whenever they can, presumably, leaving the "learning" players... What, exactly?

Going off on a side-argument, there's pretty much two ways for a player to get better at GU. One, FMs against people with higher skill levels. Two, official matches against people with higher skill levels. Low skill vs Low skill doesn't actually increase anyone's skill level, since while they might be learning lessons, they're learning the wrong lessons that will fail against higher-skill players. I was a nub myself not too long ago, only reaching what I would consider moderate skill around... six months ago. But I didn't get better by playing offi's against two players my own skill, but by playing (and usually getting massacred by) better players.

Now consider a person just joining the league, pretty much unknown to everybody. If this were to pass, how likely would it be that this new player would be called to play in ANY type of match? From what I understand, the amounts of FMs would decrease, since any "good" player would prefer to play for points, and would want to play against their own skill level. Also, they wouldn't want to offi vs the new player either: I experienced that quite a bit trying to get matches during my stint on the Embers. So... I really don't see a way for this hypothetical player to get involved in any sort of matches at all, besides against those of his own skill level, leading him to not improve and, in frustration, eventually leave.

So my conclusion is that, pretty much, the implementation of this matching variant would almost certainly decrease the number of FMs, which are, I believe, the driving force to becoming better for any new player. On this basis, I would oppose this measure.

[blast]

I'm going to expand a bit on my last post. Is the goal of this change to increase activity? If so, I don't really see that happening. Sure, it may appear to be more active after this change because more matches might be reported. However, that metric is useless unless the number of fun matches before and after this new play mode are tracked as well. People only have a limited amount of time they can play in a day. If you split that time between three options instead of two, then there is less time for each option. Now, not playing league matches myself, I'm not familiar with some of the etiquette of the league. Could this change cause a decline in the number of official normal team matches, since someone might then be in the middle of an official pseudo team match and be less likely to leave that than a fun match?

[Bullet Catcher]

Would it be enough to simply allow official reporting of fun matches? Without making any changes to the league website code we could add a red team and a purple team and record fun match results using those teams. This would increase league activity as measured by the number of reported matches.

Players would not be allowed to join these teams on the web site. Fun match team membership would vary and be determined on the spot just as it is now.

In this proposal, traditional teams would not be be allowed to record matches against the red/purple teams. I think this means that ELO scores of the traditional teams won't be affected at all, but someone will correct me if I am wrong. (We could choose to allow matches between traditional and red/purple teams, but previous discussion shows that is more controversial.)

At any time and for any reason we can stop doing this and (with a slight effort by brad or ts) delete the fun matches from the database, which will undo any undesired ELO effects.

[FiringSquad]

Fun matches are an important part of the league.
It allows new players to learn without the pressure of the competitiveness of an official match.
I would be very worried about any proposal that reduces the opportunity for such matches or makes them so competitive that new players will be intimidated.

Having said that, BC's proposal of allowing FMs to be declared official at the onset and recorded in the league sounds good. I think it will only work though if there is some pain/reward for participants, or it will change nothing.

[psycho]

This is not a bad Idea but I believe it would be much less complicated to... instead of doing this, start up the funleague again. that would save time and would be less confusing. and if you don't want to be apart of it you don't have to.

[An SQUERRILz]

I'm going to expand a bit on my last post. Is the goal of this change to increase activity? If so, I don't really see that happening. Sure, it may appear to be more active after this change because more matches might be reported. However, that metric is useless unless the number of fun matches before and after this new play mode are tracked as well. People only have a limited amount of time they can play in a day. If you split that time between three options instead of two, then there is less time for each option. Now, not playing league matches myself, I'm not familiar with some of the etiquette of the league. Could this change cause a decline in the number of official normal team matches, since someone might then be in the middle of an official pseudo team match and be less likely to leave that than a fun match?

Since no one else can be bothered answering this, I'll put my spin on it.
Yes, the main goal is to increase activity. It naturally follows that some supporters believe the changes will result in: newOffiCount + newFmCount > oldOffiCount + oldFmCount
Some people also additionally believe that the quality of a match can be improved even if the players and teams are exactly the same as before.
Indeed the differences between offi, pseudo-offi and FM can seem pretty trivial. The premise is that the new system will increase players' inclination to match at all. Specifically, having a would-be FMs be recorded, worth small rating change, a secondary loyalty, etc etc is believed by supporters to bring about this. A double-edged example would be the fact that there can be 3 teams + others online simultaneously for 5 hours and no matches happen, not even FMs.

As for your categorization of the match types, the idea is: convert % of FMs to pseudo-offi, which is inherently good (in theory). It is possible for offi to be lost to pseudo-offi, but the chance of that 30 minute pseudo-offi disabling an offi where one member has "exactly 30 minutes start now or i can't" is small in comparison to the value of having any match at all.

[slime]

This is not a bad Idea but I believe it would be much less complicated to... instead of doing this, start up the funleague again. that would save time and would be less confusing. and if you don't want to be apart of it you don't have to.

I actually proposed bringing back the fun match league 4 years ago: http://forums.bzflag.org/viewtopic.php?f=103&t=13687

We were calling it ancient 4 years ago! But anyway, while there was initial support for the project, it just became too much of a hassle to deal with entering matches. You try remembering all 12 people who played in a 6v6 fun match!

This idea would definitely be plausible if automatic match reporting was introduced to the league, or even just for fun matches as a trial or something. The fun match league is actually a really good concept, but the league site is gone by now and would probably need a rewrite of some sorts to get it up to date.

[macsforme]

I fail to understand what would be the point of reporting funmatches as official. What if I swap with a player on the other team before starting to even the teams? What if two on my team have to go out in the middle of a match, so one comes over from their team to keep the teams even? And the next match, what if the teams are totally mixed up again? Any "red team" or "purple team" ELO rating is rendered entirely irrelevant.

[AlexanderTheGreat]

well i'm a little confused about all the ramifications of this. here are my thoughts/questions:

do we expect more activity with this option as opposed to people just fun matching when officials can't be arranged? i'm not sure i see the reason more activity would be expected. maybe when it's a novelty at first.

what if the regular team wins or loses points, but the league team does not? so it's kind of half official and half fun.

i really can't see the sense in the ever changing league teams mixed into the ladder with the regular teams. or.....do the league teams get zeroed out in the ladder each time the players are re-distributed for the league teams? maybe that's a better idea.

i am not against the idea. it sounds like fun, i admit. but adding the league teams to the ladder kind of has me baffled.

just sayin'

alex

[Agent West]

In my oppinion the idea is a bit confusing, especially for new members (why i'm kinda confused too). If you want to play but don't want it recorded, play an FM. If you are in the middle of an Official and a teammate needs to go, either replace with another teammate or let someone else (non-teammate) step in and help out. If you want to challnge another team, put up an "I challenge you" post here on forums, set up when/where/who, and best of luck to your team! Just an oppinion.

[etigah]

I have a proposal. Why not introduce a pseudo team to the league and lets call it, say, "Rogue" . All teamless players are automatically part of that team. Scoring can be like other normal matches, or the points for such matches can be of fixed value.
The pros being 1- ease of forming a team quickly with varying levels of strength. 2- makes it pointless to create teams that have no chance to compete. 3- makes it possible for players who find difficulty joining a strong team to play along strong players. 4- frees strong players, who prefer to, from attachment to a team when they chose to, while still being able to play offi matches.

[figurines]

When the novelty of being able to find a match for your team wears off people will...stop matching! Logic prevails again

Yes I do think this would render ELO useless, but for me since I never cared about team rankings or whatever it is not a loss. Also having the league die from inactivity, but still holding onto our ranking system would definitely be worth it. We might not be able to play in the league or find matches, but at least we can tell where all the inactive teams sit on the scoreboard.

I really like keeping track of individual player statistics, not only does it satisfy squirrels who want to prove they are the best, but it also would show skill more accurately than our current system...anyone want to volunteer to be the best at coding and implement this idea?

Lots of posts by people who are not active...not that I mind, but I'd love for them to be active...we wouldn't be having this discussion if 1. we had more players 2. the active players (or some of them) didn't find the league to be lacking something (can't imagine what...maybe MATCHES).

Talking about just reporting fms is great, but what will happen when there are no teams left to match and only fms happen. Wouldn't you rather have something in between the two?

Change is a difficult thing, but if we do nothing the league will soon just be servers with the players who still love playing (because its fun not because it proves they are better) having fms. I'd rather be a part of a team, even if I have to match other "informal" teams (tfg vs pink etc). Maybe this is better than having fms where only some of the players are trying to be competitive.

We have to address having a smaller player base. Maybe contraction (less teams, but larger team sizes) should be enforced (by this I mean only allowing 6 teams to exist and lumping players into those teams or something) by the guleague council...or at least proposed as an alternative instead of having lots of teams with less players.

I don't know just my thoughts.