1st official pillbox league pick-up contest!

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deviltank
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1st official pillbox league pick-up contest!

Post by deviltank »

heya guys and girls

Longhair and i are proud to announce the first official pillbox league pick-up contest. In order to reanimate the pillbox league we plan a contest with random teams and a new and experimental mode for the time after Christmas that will last seven weeks. This will be the perfect occasion to have much fun for everyone, especially for the short-in-time-tanks, as permanent activity is not mandatory.

Stay tuned, the invitation (and registration) will be online soon!
lol_u died

Post by lol_u died »

Do you guys have a website?
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Post by ducatiwannabe »

Your question:
Do you guys have a website?
Your answer:
Stay tuned, the invitation (and registration) will be online soon!
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Post by Longhair »

I'll be working on a registration system, and hope to have something up and running in the next week or two.
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Post by slime »

Sounds like fun, glad to see people taking an interest in bringing back some of the pillbox league activity. I'll be sure to join when the time comes :)
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Post by deviltank »

The reason why we announce the contest that early (even before an invitation is online) is that everyone has the possibility to get knowledge of this event. The 1vs1 contest has been announced around 1,5 months before the registration deadline and during/after the contest many players asked me why it hasn`t been announced much earlier as they would have also played. It seems many players only log in every two or three months and this contest will also be suitable for them, so thatswhy the early announce.

dt
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Post by Monster »

can't wait for it :)
thx for your time and work !
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Post by deviltank »

Registration is finally open. Have a look at:

http://pillbox.bzleague.com/pickupTournament/index.php


You need to log in first in order to be able to see the invitation and the registration button!

If you have any questions or remarks, just post them here.
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Post by deviltank »

25 players have registered so far. Registration closes december 11.
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Post by deviltank »

On special request the invitation now can be viewed without beeing registered and loged in. Please use the following link:

http://pillbox.bzleague.com/pickupTournament/


Interested players still need to register their account in the pillbox league in order to be able to join the tournament. We don`t accept any registrations via bz mail, email or chat.

The invitation now also shows the number of registered players, 34 for now, something around 50 or more would be nice.
Again: Players of every skill level are welcome.
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Post by Longhair »

Teams will automatically be set tomorrow morning at 9:00 UTC. Last chance to join up!
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Post by SkillDude »

Whew, lucky I saw this, it sounds very fun! I've joined it. :)
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Post by Longhair »

Except the fact that I'm a twit who shouldn't post late at night. Deadline is Thursday 9:00 am, not Tuesday (today). :? Glad you saw it anyway, sigonasr2
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Post by red-der »

Hmmm, I just realized this tournament.

Luckily, it was not to late. I´m the 54th. ;-)
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Post by deviltank »

The groups are online. 56 players have registered and have been randomly put into 14 teams with four players each. The tournament will start in about two weeks. During these two weeks you have the opportunity to practice with your temporary mates and organize your teams concerning timezones, holidays etc.
A contest section in strayer`s league player finder is in work.
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Post by deviltank »

Strayer`s now shows online pillbox contest participants:

http://bzstats.strayer.de/leagues/pbt08/


Please use this very useful website to find your mates and opponents.
The pairings will be announced at the pillbox contest homepage.
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Post by deviltank »

Due to technical problems the pillbox contest won`t start today. A new date will be announced soon. We`re sorry for that.


Details:

http://pillbox.bzleague.com/index.php?link=news
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Post by Longhair »

Ok then, we're up and running once again. Teams are chosen, and round 1 has started. You have through January 5 to play your matches against your assigned team.

Good luck!
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Re: 1st official pillbox league pick-up contest!

Post by zebedy »

Silly question.

I made it known to my teammates my times for availablity and likewise they did for me...I am sure that every other team has done similar

However,

It is Jan 4th today and although I have been online at my available time and I have seen my teamates, we have yet to find 2 other teammates from the team we are due to play. I am sure that they are having the same problems as us.
In fact, I havent yet heard of anyone who has played their matches yet although I am sure that some have.
So what are we going to do in the case of 2 teams that have yet to play a match.
Personally I think that most teams have been looking for their respective oppositions but havent been able to connect with each other when online.
It hardly seems fair that 1 team may be forwarded to the next round when both teams have tried to meet but have yet to be able to.

Is there a ruling in place for this
Someone else said that to me once......only once
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Re: 1st official pillbox league pick-up contest!

Post by Knox »

I didn't even find my teammates. I had holidays and had pretty much free time, so i were often online. Well, i meet my mates before the tournament started, but afterwards, i didn't see one.
Maybe they just didn't find me (bzstats.strayer.de?).
I think the tournament isn't successful as we/i wished. Maybe just the wrong time to start something like that?! I mean, started between Christmas and Sylvester. Must players were in holiday and celebrated with their families.
At the beginning i really thought it will be fun, but now, after i see how active most are, i don't think that it will be a real nice experience.
Sorry, just had to say it.
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Re: 1st official pillbox league pick-up contest!

Post by deviltank »

Yes zebedy and piet, you are right. The contest in the current version failed.
I also tried to get the matches for several days but couldn`t.

@piet: thanks for your post, there`s no need to be sorry. Some days ago we already saw that things were not going well and created an alternative. Actually we planned to wait for the end of the round but your posts showed that this is not necessary.

@zebedy: ruling was planned as 1-1 draw, but in the current situation that would be pointless. Planning the contest we had several ideas concerning the mode. We will now probably return to the old idea, but that in the next post.

In our opinion (longhair and mine) the mode was the most promising but also a risk. For those of you know, some time ago sussi and matrixe organized a similar tourney ducati style, but also failed because of the inactivity of the players or the inability to schedule thier matches.
We hoped that players would organize their matches themselves (as proposed and almost demanded in the invitation!) but we have to accept that random groups+unscheduled matches simply do not not work at all in bz flag.

The reasons:
-Many players who registered are inactive, i guess around 30-40 % of the total number of players. Inactive meaning less than three playing days during the last two months.
I really can`t understand why these guys registered. In the 1vs1 contest i organized there were also around 20% of the total players who did not play any match. I know real life can be busy, but why registering when you can`t just play one single hour every week?

-There is no active public pillbox server any more, as meeting point. Also very few players seem to use strayer`s to find opponents.

It was a good try but mistakes happen. Next time we will know better. And next time will be soon, but that in another post.

btw: players who are banned from any bzleague for very bad behaviour or cheating in any way will not be accepted. Next time i will check the gu league banlist BEFORE the contest starts, to avoid one team has less players suddenly. But that problem was definetely my mistake.

The pillbox pickup contest is now stopped. It will be reorganized and restarted soon (will be posted here)

dt
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Re: 1st official pillbox league pick-up contest!

Post by deviltank »

I have to discuss the details with longhair first, but one good idea for the restart would be the following initial idea:

-teams with at least six players, so that if two or three players are inactive once more the team is still able to play

-scheduled matches! Unscheduled matches simply don`t work in bz flag. We have enough servers to let all teams simultaneously and if we offer two or three specific redundant scheduled days/times per week i think it should be possible for at least two players of each team to show up. (The teams would still be allowed to play matches at every times, scheduled days would more play the role of a deadline, where teams which don`t show up can lose by forfeit; answering zebedys question for the ruling).

Anyway, soon we will announce how the contest will continue.
If you have any special criticism or ideas please post them here during the next days.

A big thank you to all active players who tried to make the old mode work!

dt
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Re: 1st official pillbox league pick-up contest!

Post by red-der »

It was really a strange situation: I had a lot of free time the last 4 weeks and played way too much bzflag. I was nearly every day online for hours, my teammates too, but i never found 2 members of our 1st round opponent ready. :rip:

So I thought a little about it and here ar my 2 cents:
:book: :book:

There are a few - maybe 10 - PB-Players regularly online, some others less often. Why not making it the following:

No fix teams, no fix time
Pre-registered players for that event
if enough (2-10) are online, they can match. The team-members are choosen by chance (or an external generator). This could last a month or so and it will work with unscheduled matches. The benefit is that the really in Pillbox interested ones can play a lot - at the moment PB seems to be nearly dead.
Maybe we can add one or to fix dates/ times for this matches to.

---

The results (kill-death-ratio, win/ loss,..) of those matches count for every single player, and after some matches, we get an average strength-index and a ladder of "how important" a player is for his team. Some players will have played a doutzen matches, others maybe only 3 or 4, but that doesnt matter. The index is averaged.

-

After this, we can announce a Date / Time for a big and funny match. The two teams are generated at this day by the "strength-index" (best player Team A, second best Team B, third best Team A,...) and which are online. So the teams will be - more or less - equal.
If there are more players, than available "teamslots", the amount of played pre-matches counts (one played 6 matches, the other 9 matches and they have the same "strength-index", the one with 9 matches plays).

Thats my idea how it could work.
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Re: 1st official pillbox league pick-up contest!

Post by Longhair »

Sorry to be non-communicative, but I'm usually away over the weekend.

Due to a bunch of personal problems in real life, I have no time or desire to work on the PHP code for the tournament. Honestly, I'm a pretty lousy hacker, and getting what had up and running was a good bit of work for me. I'd like to see this tournament happen, but I can't put the work in right now.

There were problems with our tournament setup, mainly in that people couldn't seem to find each other for matches. If somebody has good ideas on how to make something like this work, go right ahead and code something up. So long as I don't have to maintain it, and it looks like there's a vaguely reasonable chance it would work, you've got my blessing.
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Re: 1st official pillbox league pick-up contest!

Post by slime »

red-der wrote:There are a few - maybe 10 - PB-Players regularly online, some others less often. Why not making it the following:

No fix teams, no fix time
Pre-registered players for that event
if enough (2-10) are online, they can match. The team-members are choosen by chance (or an external generator). This could last a month or so and it will work with unscheduled matches. The benefit is that the really in Pillbox interested ones can play a lot - at the moment PB seems to be nearly dead.
But I think this is mainly the problem. There are probably about 10 players in all of BZFlag who are truly interested in the pillbox league. If this tournament is ever going to work out, it must further interest those players who aren't very active in the league. The concept of the previous pickup tournament was good, but would never work out in the current conditions. Four players per team, where one or more could be inactive, the others living around the world and cannot get on at the same times as their teamies. Even when 2 mates found themselves on at the same time, it was still near impossible to find 2 players on the designated opponent team on at the same time too.

So, here's a couple ideas of how it could work better:

1. Players pick their own teams (perhaps 4-6 players per team max?). This would allow players to pick mates that are on the same time as them. It would also, I think, interest more people to actually play their matches, in the hope that their created team would be the best.

2. 2-4 massive teams (randomly assigned). This would allow the already active pillbox players to match quite a lot together, but also encourage less active players to come support their team. It would also allow for bigger matches, which may prove to be quite fun :)

3. More advertising/hype. Besides being on the e-mail strings of a certain few players, the tournament was not advertised. The only way for players to have known about it was logging into the pillbox league site, and it seems not too many people do so these days. It was also at the same time as the GU league's Riker Cup, so I believe many of the registered tournament players focused more on that. The Riker Cup kind of overshadowed Pillbox's tournament. I believe that if the tournament was to work, players would need to be reminded of it everywhere possible. Some places could be:
-Front page of pillbox site
-Public pillbox servers
-GU News page if possible, since this is the most active league

I hope this tournament can happen, I really enjoy the pillbox map!
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