Dont shoot the idea, read it first...

birdie · Post by **birdie** » Wed May 31, 2006 7:36 pm

Hello!

After some talking with Pimpinella yesterday the following idea came: merging

Before you read: this is NOT the idea to copy the OL, there are lots of differences + the idea of merging excists allready long.

So merging. I have the idea to do this for the 3 most popular leagues: GU, pillbox and ducati.
We would have one "big ladder" where all the matches that have been played count and 3 seperated rankings for for matches from each style only. By that way you know the better teams for each style and the better teams overall.

advantages:

- one link for every league, also more attractive for newbies, they only have to register once and they are done for each style to play
- there can only come more matches from it, not less (teams that are used to match on one style, might try others)
- not hard to work this out code minded (yay menotume

)

Disadvantages:

- we need some ideas to work out the teams, for example i'm on 3 different leagues on 3 different teams with several different people -> if you reorganize the teams, some teams wont be happy loosing the points they allready have now.
- who is going to "own" it? a merge of the 3 excisting leages? and several league owners from different leagues can have different ideas about stuff

I propably forgot some stuff to write, but here you have the idea allready. Feel free to give some comments.

birdie

bamf. · Post by **bamf.** » Wed May 31, 2006 7:56 pm

The Walmart bzflag central?

In theory it looks attractive, however as you've stated, you will have a problem with players on different teams in each of the leauges. I also know that some (including myself) like playing with different teammates, mixes it up and makes it interesting.

There is a league for this already, Open League, do you want to copy that?

birdie · Post by **birdie** » Wed May 31, 2006 8:03 pm

Before you read: this is NOT the idea to copy the OL, there are lots of differences + the idea of merging excists allready long.

so: no

bamf. · Post by **bamf.** » Wed May 31, 2006 8:12 pm

Sorry, I didn't make the connection (read too fast). But, as you're already aware, the different team for different league issue is still a big one.

mistake · Post by **mistake** » Wed May 31, 2006 8:16 pm

GU league forum: a suggestion

(read too fast)

and bamf, the topic title was Dont shoot the idea, read it first...

CannonBallGuy · Post by **CannonBallGuy** » Wed May 31, 2006 8:22 pm

Another disadvantage would be similar to as with the Open League - arguments over which map the teams will match on.

However, I think the advantages could outway those negatives and this would NOT be like the open league, and even if it is so similar, SO WHAT!?!?

Sure, some people involved in the OL have been total jerks recently, but that does NOT make the OL bad. The OL is a GREAT idea, it is just a few select people that ruin it.

So I vote yes for this, I think it cannot do much harm because it still has separate ladders and rankings as well as the overall ladder/rankings.
Sure, some players may be split up from some friends, BUT, if all the active people from all the 3 league merge together, there will be a LOT of active players. They can all make teams with 10 or 12 players, so it is likely that teams will merge.

For example, Birdie plays with: Blue Eyes, jomojo, Zongo, etc in ducati.
He plays with RB2, RB3, Baroness, Xell, etc on GU and with: Blue Eyes (again), qdot, FantaZee, Zongo (again), etc on PillBox.

So, perhaps all of those can form one team on the new Merged-League, they would have about 20 players I think.
Or they could split into two teams and make teams of 10 players...
It is quit possible that there would be a divide in those teams anyway.

Plus, not many players are active in all 3 leagues. I am on teams in 3 but am inactive on ducati.

If the leagues merged, I would create a new KAS team with all my past and present teammates (that wanted to join) and I would also invite players from my PillBox team: EAF too.

zongo · Post by **zongo** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 10:03 am

girls/guys would it be so difficult to allow a player to be in different teams?
At most one per subleague of course, but im sure that could be easily done, am i wrong? (meno or dmp should answer here

)

that would make a lot of difference with OL already

(btw i also think they have some really good ideas there)

If there are 3 different ladders, players should be able to join different teams for each subleague. I don't like the idea of an absolute merge of teams (at the end there might be only 1 team lol)

CannonBallGuy · Post by **CannonBallGuy** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 10:08 am

Zongo's point is good in that it removes the disadvantage of all the old teams in the 3 leagues getting mixed up during the merge.
But however, I find it difficult to imagine how the site could be laid out...
It seems most sensible to me to have a separate section for each league if this is how it would be done - and that is not much different to way we have it now.
The 'Overall Ladder' would also be useless now if everyone has a different team for each style, so, really, there is no difference to the way it is now, except that new players just go to one place and register once.

Admirarch · Post by **Admirarch** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 1:23 pm

I think it is absolutely vital to keep distinct teams throughout the different styles. Firstly you're going to succeed in annoying an awful lot of people, me included, if you attempt to force people to either join together into giant super teams or leave many of their teammates.

Furthermore it makes much more sense to have everybody in a team wanting to match the style that the team plays. Otherwise, as can be seen in the "Open" league right now there's going to be an immense amound of aggravation over what style a match is played under.

So I reject, and reject strongly, any version of this which forces combined teams for each style.

As CBG has just said, this leaves us with a system which is very similar to what we have now. One thought is that we could institute personal ELO rankings as have been discussed elsewhere in order to give slightly more of a link between the subleagues but even with this it seems that there are too many hurdles for too little reward.

zongo · Post by **zongo** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 1:43 pm

the reward of a unique big league would be great imo (but i also insist on 3 or more distinct subleagues as pointed out by Admirarch)

-One unique address where new players can join 3 different subleagues: This will bring more gu players to other styles (since gu seems to be the main source of new players) and in general more exchange. A big league might appeal more new players as well.

-No need to remember 3 adresses etc. (see may 30th debate on ##ducleague

)

-there could be one global forum + one forum per subleague.

-we could call it the ctf league.

-one could also make a strenght index for teams (but imo that wouldnt make much sense since the style played are pretty different)

quantum dot · Post by **quantum dot** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 3:59 pm

I dont like the idea of merging for many reasons:

1) each league has its character, rules, and admins. And this should stay like that. You cannot try to revive ducati by eating on other for now successful leagues. Ducati is ducati and I love it for what it is.

2) many, many people do not play GU AND ducati, but just one of them. Implying some teams will only play some style some other and then we will have the complains about phagos, for instace, playing only GU because they do not like ducati. and BaRs reluctant to match on GU.

3) I like the idea of playing with a bunch of friends on ducati and a different bunch on GU or PB. Indeed, it would be close to imposible for me to have the same team in GU and ducati, my ducati friends cant jump and my GU friends cant dodge. I cant do either two, so I play both

4) OL is already trying the merging, so let it be.

5) I hope it doesnt sound as if I shot the idea ...

qdot

birdie · Post by **birdie** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 6:46 pm

2) many, many people do not play GU AND ducati, but just one of them. Implying some teams will only play some style some other and then we will have the complains about phagos, for instace, playing only GU because they do not like ducati. and BaRs reluctant to match on GU.

is why i suggested to keep individual ladders from each league (so like it is now, but than on one league adress) and to have one "big" ranking from all 3 together, so you see which teams play both or all 3 and can be called "the better players overall on all places".
And there might be some positive influences with that, some who only play one style might play others to to climb in the "big" ladder

5) I hope it doesnt sound as if I shot the idea ...

not at all, you gave your honoust input on a nice way which i appreciate

birdie

Longhair · Post by **Longhair** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 4:18 am

I have to agree with Quantum Dot's positions.

Here's a thought: make a web page that compiles information from all the leagues, and gives an overall view of how things are going. I'd really like to see information about each individual player's affiliation, and their won/lost matches. This would obviously take some serious PHP/MYSQL hacking, but could be cool.

[dmp] · Post by **[dmp]** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 11:08 am

Longhair wrote:Here's a thought: make a web page that compiles information from all the leagues, and gives an overall view of how things are going. I'd really like to see information about each individual player's affiliation, and their won/lost matches. This would obviously take some serious PHP/MYSQL hacking, but could be cool.

Just wondering: Something like this? http://ladder.bzflag.org/server.php?id=2 ? (It isnt in production and for now its FFA-based (everything is ready for CTF too, just needs some of my time))

wizard · Post by **wizard** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 4:30 pm

A unified ladder would have to be base on some index which is the product of the strenth in the individual leagues. So as a formula we could use:

(ducati*GU*pillbox)^(1/3)

The way the strenth is calculated is somewhat compatible with this.

The advantage of this type of rating for the unified ladder over a simple average is that it gives a bonus for having an overall good score and a penalty in the unified ladder for teams specializing on a certain dicipline.

The teams specializing in a certain discipline will certainly exist and the unified ladder is uninteresting for them. But they would certainly dominate the individual leagues just as they do now.

Together with a special rating mode to determine the initial strenth in the individual leagues faster this could work out well.

A big problem is that pillbox matches are boring as hell with less than 4-5 players in each team so I will simply not play pillbox style even if there are 3-5 others who would like to match our team. In a larger team this won't be much of a problem.

Overall the idea might not be so bad. My team(s) for ducati and GU are largely the same and it works well.

So, good posting Birdie

tokimi · Post by **tokimi** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 4:38 pm

I really do not thing that merging the leagues is a good idea. To many
people are polarized in their map preferences, and the openleague already
has trouble with arguments about which map to play.

Now, the idea of keeping the leagues sepparate, while merging their
websites, is interesting in my oppinion. That would broaden the pool of
players aware of each league, and provide some cohesion between each
league. Though I am not sure if the benefit of doing this outweighs the
coding difficulties, but of course I am no expert in programming so dont
mind me.

I also agree that creating super teams, or making people abandon 2 teams
so that a person is in only one team (assuming the leagues merged) is a
nightmare waiting to happen. I for one do not intent on leaving t42, snt
nor the stouteriks any time soon, merged league or not.

wizard · Post by **wizard** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 4:49 pm

What about this:

There is no need to force specialized teams to merge and they will just play the way they do now.

But we can allow unified teams who would then participate in the unified ladder. The unified ladder would show only the unified teams.
A few teams could be transformed into such a unified team easily and new teams can start as unified teams.

Over time we would probably get more and more unified teams since they are good fun and have the advantage that the tactics stay inside of a team and don't pour out via the teams in other leagues.

To realize this all we need is a _lot_ of software infrastructure support.

tokimi · Post by **tokimi** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 9:14 pm

That seems to be a good way to integrate the leagues, but Im not sold on
the fact that we need to integrate them in the first place.

mistake · Post by **mistake** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 12:52 am

Generally I think many ideas is always better than none at all.
But the main issue remains, how can we get you and me to play more again before we start to ask what would be a better website.

To have one unified website with lots of different views and ladders and leagues and maps, all arranged in a way that the one doesnt hurt the other, but how does this improve the league and bring *us* to match more?

CannonBallGuy · Post by **CannonBallGuy** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 10:56 am

It would improve the league by making it much easier for new players to join.
As new players join, there will be more players, thus more active players (I assume...) and therefore more matches for everyone to be involved in - new or old.

More players = More matches = More activity for everyone. No?

mistake · Post by **mistake** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 11:11 am

Very true, but i think one priority is how to get the already registered players play more again. All the league sites are linked, there is hardly any gu league player that doesn't know about ducati. And I am not saying to have one site is a bad idea, personally i would really like it as long as ladders, rating and teams are kept apart. But to have different ladders and different teams is a lot of work for the league coder and I am not sure if the effort is worth the result and if it is so much more than adding bookmarks to your browser.

(reminder, you can send menotume donations and call it bribing to have that league code, this also counts for general BZdevelopment)

But again, I like the idea and am not trying to stop ideas. I personally think it should be low on priority, though it may be tried to convince me of it's importency.
edit One thing that may be sufficient for the above as a first shot is to have the "automatic login" option for the league sites. Then wo could add links to other leagues more prominently on the league side navigation column (e.g a drop down like the theme toggle). In that way it almost looks like the leagues are integrated.