My friends, we have to make some decisions.
This is an epic-scale tournament, involving 27 maps, not counting the finales, and played with a complicated bonus structure and scoring system, and with flat rate spoils to make players pay attention to the map bonuses instead of just going for escalating kills. Even if it had been restricted to premium players only, it might easily have taken a year to complete, but the situation is hugely exacerbated by the fact that the original TO (DJENRE) recruited many freemium players, and with your slot restrictions we are moving at a snail's pace, and might take three years to finish it at the current rate.
That's if we can even keep the players for that long. Player satisfaction is low; there are many complaints and several players who have quit. This is a tournament that should never have accepted freemium players. If I had understood how badly designed this tournament was, I would never have agreed to help run it, but I was very new to the tournament world when DJENRE originally asked me and I didn't see the design flaws in it. All I saw at the time was that it was a beautiful idea. Beautiful it is, but hopelessly impractical. Anyway, what's done is done, I volunteered, and now that DJENRE has vanished I'm stuck with the thing.
Something needs to be done. I'm spending a ridiculous time on this tournament and getting bad results. There are two games which will auto-delete soon, because three freemiums cannot free up a slot to join them. Three other freemiums are stuck in those games and might pull out of them before the first three get in.
Like I said, a tourney this big and complex should never have accepted freemiums, but it did, and they/you are more than 25% of the total players, some of them quite high on the scoreboard. I certainly can't retroactively kick them out, but going on like this is turning my last few hairs gray. I even debated buying premium for everyone myself, but there are fourteen freemiums left, and I just can't afford that kind of money.
So what can be done? I've put together some ideas. I want to know what everybody thinks of them. Please look at the points below and comment on any that you think are viable, and any that you absolutely would not accept.
1. Should I short-turn the tournament? Just arbitrarily cut it off and announce a winner after the current round is over? Basically scrap about 80% of the tournament and calculate results after what we have completed?
And if we do that, should we a) attempt to play the finales, or b) scrap the finales also?
2. Should I start ruthlessly cutting anyone who can't make their invite, even though it seems very unfair? (And it raises a whole new nightmare, adjusting the scoring, because the whole score system was based on 8-player games. I've already had to make some 7-player games, but if I start ruthlessly cutting people I may end up with 6- or even 5-player games. No idea how to address the scoring if that happens.)
3. Here's an idea I had: allow proxy players. Basically the freemiums that can't make an invite because of slot limitations could invite a premium proxy to play in their place. The proxies wouldn't be eligible to score any points, but they would be able to fulfil your spot and prevent you from getting kicked out because you don't have a free slot. Actually, the more I think about it, the better this idea looks to me.
4. Should we stop trying to play several maps at once? Just play one map at a time and accept that the tournament might take four or five years to finish? I mean, it's not like CC is going to vanish.
5. Anything and everything. I'm open to suggestions. Actually, I'm desperate...
6. Of course, if there was somebody in the tournament who is wealthy enough to gift premium to fourteen players, that would solve all our problems...
Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2011 1:02 am