1st official pillbox league pick-up contest!

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

Post by red-der »

The intention in my above posting was to encourage new players to take part in this, and to have more matches for the one doutzen Pillboxplayers, there really often online.

@slime:
#1 is more or less Pillbox League and not easy for new ones to join existing teams. And you have no balanced teams this way.

#2 Seems a good idea. Especially if we combine it with fixed dates / times.

#3 Advertising may help, but maybe not as much as desired. But you re right, the Rikers Cup overshadowed it all.

Maybe we should evaluate why so much more people are attracted to the GU- League. in my opinion, PB is way easier to learn for beginners.

A little OT:
I think a short info-letter or FAQ could help improve the PB-Standing. Most players dont know how to use the "ressources" (i.e. bzstats) and how to "make" matches (are there official servers/ fixed dates are often asked questions). A lot of players dont want to search this infos, so we have to present it in an easy way.
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Re: 1st official pillbox league pick-up contest!

Post by kc9foh »

Boy i have not. been on in awhile. I have had a lot going on here but still try to play once in awhile. I will try and help Longhair with this if he still needs it. Just bare with me as well.
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Re: 1st official pillbox league pick-up contest!

Post by deviltank »

First: The contest is delayed for an uncertain time

@kc9foh: yeah, you`re one of the guys we would need now

@red-der: pb league already has a good FAQ. There is also a links section e.g. to strayer`s bzstats. If someone spends 10 mins on reading the stuff 95% of his questions will be answered. There`s also a forum, where nobody posts, dunno why.

@slime:

idea 1 is basically what easy kill did in 2007 in ducati league, it doesn`t work. Additionally this only leads to imbalanced teams because 99% of the good players cannot be convinced to match together with beginners.

idea 2 is basically what i proposed above, but at the moment pb league has bigger problems than the contest. I`ve found some guys who are willing to work on it so i hope we will be able to do the contest in some weeks/months, but at the moment i can`t promise anything.

idea 3 is a good idea, but beliebve me, i`ve tried my best to advertise, but it`s not easy. Kierra tried to arrange a MessageOfTheDay (message when you start bzflag) for us but we got rejected.
I`ve tried to get servermessages on the servers but the server owners and the guys who have acces could not be reached. GU is an idea i`ve missed. Besides we organized and scheduled the contest far before Rikers Cup was planned, that was not our fault, but bad luck.


The overall problems is that all those admins and serverowners are NOT interested any more in what`s happening with the leagues, it`s the same with ducati. At the moment the teamranking at pillbox is broken and everyone who has acces is not interested any more in the league or has good reasons not to spend his time for bz flag (a big thank you to longhair for all his work!).

So the crucial question is if it still makes sence to keep on the pillbox league. A few people and myself are willing to spend time on working on it but we don`t have infinite time and we don`t want to work onsenseless projects.

Personally i like the great fun inbz flag and especially in pillbox very much and i spend time on it whenever busy real life allows it. I met people from more foreign countries than i ever will in real life. I would be a bit sad if there`s no future for leagues and tournaments in bz flag (GU league is the exception and shows how to do it!).
If there are some ambitious people who are willing to help i`m sure there will be a way to to solve the problems and realize the contest, if not the league will be dead soon.

Comments, positive or negative are welcome!

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

Post by allyfied »

Hi
I really looked forward the pickup-contest - it seems to were great fun.

If there is any way i can help you, either in coding, organising or promoting, just write a mail or call me. I will support you as much as my business allows.

The Pillbox is my favourite bz-style, the teamplay is almost working fine and i remember many nice chats.

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

Post by jh^ »

how about similar contest as gu rikers cup is for pb? just one night usa players vs. europeans. time and date set. but im not sure if standard pb match map is big enough...but i like the idea.
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Re: 1st official pillbox league pick-up contest!

Post by ducatiwannabe »

I think the main reason the tournament "didn't work," even though I'm sure it would have if given a little more time, was the positioning. I know that personally I've had one event after another come up during the holidays and a few days after New Years. Perhaps we could consider reviving this a little later on in the year - maybe spring break or something. ;-) I'm usually very flexible, but this was a very busy and difficult end/start of year.

Wish I could help somehow. Thanks for trying to get a tourny going anyway. That alone should be rewarded. ;-)
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Re: 1st official pillbox league pick-up contest!

Post by quantum dot »

deviltank wrote:Besides we organized and scheduled the contest far before Rikers Cup was planned, that was not our fault, but bad luck.
I apologize if GU League Riker Cup interfered in any way with PB tourney. This was not of course intentional. We were not aware that our cup might have an effect on PB tourney. Still, I am convinced the two things are unrelated since the base of players is not shared by the two leagues. I am with slime here in his view that there are very few people interested in PB league. I started a team twice and I was unable to get matches for so long that I stop trying. Many times there were teams online but they did not even bother to answer a call for matching. With this tiny base of players is difficult if not impossible that such a tourney (which requires extra interest and is time demanding) would work.

Bare in mind that Riker Cup was organized as a ONE day event, it lasted about 2 hours in total. Matching non stop. Also, Riker Cup is a TWO teams event. Organization is simpler in the sense that people play for America or Europe, there is no teams or tourney. So I am here with jh^ and think that one day cup would have a greater reward.

I think it is not quite as you deviltank described: server owners are no longer interested in PB league. I think it is a kind of feedback mechanism. If you have many active players in the league you have more well-reputed owners who are willing to provide good support, then servers are functioning better, then more people become attracted because "things work", and so on. It is very difficult to get owners involved when no more than 10 matches are played in a good month.

My ideas for improving PB activity would be to make a smaller map and only allow 2 vs 2 matches, and force a maximum of say 3/4 players per team. Call it a miniPB League if you wish. Mini map, mini teams, fast captures, stressing moments. Make it a fast pace competition, since the absence of rico and jumping seems to make PB league not appealing to many players. If you dont like the 2 vs 2 limit and smaller map, then add some teleporters in the present map so that the game can become faster and players have new tricks. So much open field I think is freaking for newbes. These arent fully worked ideas, but just something that might be worthwhile pondering.

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

Post by deviltank »

@jh^: might be an idea if enough players are interested. But the current limit is 5 vs 5 or even less players on the servers. This leads back to the problem that mentioned above, that you need interested admins and serverowners working on it. Also i doubt a one day event really helps to bring back activity in the league. In my opinion that`s something we could do when we`ve already done the first step.

@ducatiwannabe: More time would not have helped. As far as i know only one single contest match has been played. Over 20% of all players have been inactive (no playing session for over one month and no log-ins). Also keep in mind that easy kill`s similar duc tourney in 2007 failed, although there were much bigger teams and duc league has much more (interested?) players than pb league.
I`ve seen the impressive activity of duc and pb league in 2006 when i began with bz flag and hoped these days might return. But that won`t happen.

@quantumdot: i did not blame the Riker`s Cup, which in no way influenced pb activity, i just answered the critisism we would have scheduled bad.
Your propose a new league, i don`t see any chances to get enough people to work on such a project.
Also, if you change the style, it would only be a bad version of gu league.

You guys are right, there are very few interested players; some statistics about pb league (strayer`s and quick calculation):
-200 players registered at the moment, over 40 teamless-->about 160 players in teams
-over 50% of the players in teams have lo log in for over two months-->less than 80 players left
-from these 80 players i would call not more than 20 interested pb league players. In total i guess there are not more than 40 players who are even willing to play a match.
-pbleague has 21 teams! Active players don`t leave inactive teams, teamcaptains don`t kick inactive members and invite/teach new players anymore.

I hoped many of the old "pillbox-legends" would return for the contest, teach the new players who joined for the contest, maybe invite them to their teams and this way get more players for the league. But instead only the last few hardcore pillboxers were really interested.

It was worth a try, but from my point the contest is canceled and dead. Any further work on it and the pillbox league is senseless unless much more players are really interested.

For the players who like tourneys: Maybe another 1vs1 contest will come this summer :P

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

Post by slime »

deviltank wrote:I`ve seen the impressive activity of duc and pb league in 2006 when i began with bz flag and hoped these days might return. But that won`t happen.
I too have seen the impressive activity of duc and pb leagues, and took a major part in both of them. When I strain my mind to think of WHY these days won't return, I get an obvious answer: new players. Back then, it was a rare occasion to not have a pb or duc public server on the top of the server list. A good portion of people who were 'regulars' at those servers eventually ended up joining the corresponding league. Now, only a few - IF ANY - pb or duc public server regulars are joining their leagues. No league can increase activity without the interest of new players.

A good way would be for a group of hardcore pb players to hang around obs at the pb public server, and any new player who seems to be good at or is interested in pillbox should be personally advised to join the pb league and a team. I myself don't have the time, energy, or willingness to do this, but perhaps others do..
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Re: 1st official pillbox league pick-up contest!

Post by Gearth »

Well slime, your first idea doesn't seem like it could work to me. You may have a really strong team with regular pillbox players on it and the rest of the teams with new players and a couple of scattered good players on the team. :|
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Re: 1st official pillbox league pick-up contest!

Post by io »

Well, i read throw all the posts, and what i think is the problem, is not the lack of interest etc, it's that there are overall not enough players, for so many different leagues, tournaments etc.

Might be just me, but i remember times, were the list server was listing servers with players on it, 3 pages or me down the list server. Now it barlely touches 2.

So, for me it's not the lack of interest in any kind, just the lack of players.
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Re: 1st official pillbox league pick-up contest!

Post by Zac »

there are 3 new teams back in the pillbox league. [MaxDamage] team leader-- maxdamage :)
Pillbox team. leader-- Error, PB98 team leader--ostatnia_lama and the infamous ICE :) leader-- Zac (me) my team is not active at this very moment but as the school hols are arriving soon i am confident that we can get in lotsa matches. the fact being that we all enjoy pillbox very much
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