Tournament improvements

[P4Ssoa]

Description:
Tournaments are fun!
Yes they are, but they are now rather chaotic and forum based. We should implement them more in the website, so users will be able to follow up on their tournaments more easily, join them more easily and tournament creators should be able to create them more easily.

Specifics/Details:
This topic is mostly about brainstorming how we could improve tournaments on this website.
My current idea's:

• Make a special tournament tab on the left side with a dropdown menu. Here there are some options like Create a tournament, Join a tournament, Active tournaments, Completed tournaments.
• Make it possible for members to join a tournament just by clicking on a "join" button. People who joined can be placed on a list of players currently in the tournament. If they want to leave anyway, they have the option until the tournament organiser starts the tournament. When the tournament is full, the tournament organiser can use the option to accept X-amount of reserves. If not, you cannot join the tournament anymore and the tournament will automatically be removed from the list.
• Active tournaments: This can include a lists of tournaments you are currently participating in. For each tournament you can see the active games, and winners of those games. You can also see the round you are in. Of course, you have a link to the forum topic where the tournament can be discussed.
• Completed tournaments: You can see the winner and your own rank (or round you were eliminated)
• Create a tournament: Lots of options to create tournaments for the organizer to make his own tournament. He could be using a standard setup (like a bracket tournament. With each round a map chosen by the organizer.) or a modified setup where he can invite players to specific games and make a tournament structure the way he likes it. (just like it is now actually)
• If you created a tournament, you should get a manage tournament tab, where you have the option to... manage your tournament the way you like it!

How this will benefit the site and/or other comments:

• More peeps will join tournaments
• Easier for organisers to create tournaments
• Just a mayor improvement in this section!

How I see it:

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[DoomYoshi]

It was hinted that TOs would eventually be allowed to use conquer cup style features, many of which you listed here.

Its a great idea, and if implemented would be a landmark in conquer club.

I like the current system though.

[P4Ssoa]

I think the current system works. It is proven by the many tournaments that have been completed and are currently being organized. That's just a fact.

As a relatively new participating member in tournaments, I have to say that the step to join my first tournament was relatively big. It may sound strange, but you have to actually figure out yourself how to find tournaments, what tournament setup you would like, how to join them (not by joining a game in the tournament tab, but going to the tournament topic) and then do the effort of posting in the tournament topic and after that also check if you are actually accepted to play. (maybe the tournament is full).
If you are a longtime member participating in community events and joined your 143th tournament, you probably ask yourself... what's the effort? What's hard about it? It's all so logical!
You are right. It is not hard. It is very easy! But you need to know how it all works.

At this moment, I see tournaments as some mini-events in the background of this website made by players who are active in the CC community.
I would love to see it as a main gamestyle which is attractive for almost everyone! Just like 24h-games or speedgames.
It should be super user friendly.
Just like you said: A landmark in ConquerClub!

I bet there are also lots of players right now who love to participate in 20 tournaments at once. They just play their games and don't even look at the scores and what tournaments they are close to winning and what tournaments they are eliminated from.
But with these implementations, they can easily see their current stats in a nice overview. With this option they may get more excited for a tournament because the follow up is 2 clicks away!

Though I can imagine it will be a lot of work to implement all of this.

[greenoaks]

for the vast majority of tournaments it is really easy to see where you are at. the game's label says round 2, round 3, semi-final or final.

[P4Ssoa]

True, but what if you have joined several tournaments in the past week(s) and you want to know what tournaments you are still playing in.(because in some you do not have an active game, because you are waiting for your next opponent.)

Or what if you have joined several tournaments that did not start yet, and you forgot what tournaments and how many you joined.
Wouldn't it be nice to have an overview somewhere?

Of course you can look everything up in some way. And no it is not an absolutely necessary implementation, but nobody can deny that it would be a big improvement to this website.

[iamkoolerthanu]

This is true I often see the same players over and over again in tournies, if it was made so it was very simple for a player who has never even thought about clicking the forum pages or ever posting to join it would be much better

For now this system works but an implementation where users who has never and will never touch the forums would be amazing

[spiesr]

One potential downside to the suggestion as it is presented:
Are the players who haven't otherwise managed to find the tournament forum the sort of players you really want joining or creating tournaments anyway?
What I mean is that a "Join a Tournament" tab seems like it would end up drawing a lot of players you wouldn't follow through. Same with "Create a Tournament." By having the tournament features sort of buried in the forums you can filter out many of the inexperienced or non-committed players. The ultimate benefits of said tabs might outweigh the drawbacks in the end, but the matter at least deserves some thought as to the drawbacks.

[greenoaks]

One potential downside to the suggestion as it is presented:
Are the players who haven't otherwise managed to find the tournament forum the sort of players you really want joining or creating tournaments anyway?
What I mean is that a "Join a Tournament" tab seems like it would end up drawing a lot of players you wouldn't follow through. Same with "Create a Tournament." By having the tournament features sort of buried in the forums you can filter out many of the inexperienced or non-committed players. The ultimate benefits of said tabs might outweigh the drawbacks in the end, but the matter at least deserves some thought as to the drawbacks.

at the top of every page is a tab called Tournaments. if a player can't work out how to click on it & follow the instructions at the top of that page then i don't want them joining mine.

[P4Ssoa]

Greenoaks, with 7903 posts I am sure you know your way around this website. With 33 tournament wins, I'm sure you also know everything about tournaments. But you really disappoint me with the content (or better yet lack of content) in your last reply. It's clear that the threshold for posting isn't very high for you. No offence.

iamkoolerthanu, that's exactly what I'm saying! I haven't participated in too many tournaments. (15 to 20 at most I think.) But it seems like I'm always meeting the same players.

Spiesr. That's something I've been thinking about too. This does absolutely deserve some thought when thinking about implementing this feature.
The things you mentioned are indeed not good. However I'm sure it is possible to minimalize the drawbacks by implementing certain barriers.
if you set certain requirements (%attendance, rank, rating) I assume you can already lower this. Also most deadbeats will be filtered in the first round and they can be replaced with reserves. I think this will especially be a problem when this suggestion is first implemented, because lots of people will want to try it out without thinking that they'll need to participate in this tournament over the next couple of months. After a while, those people who didn't like participating in the tournaments, didn't show up or quit will most likely not join another tournament either.
For the tournament organizers, I'm not sure if there will be too many. It will still take a bit of time setting up the tournament. While they are figuring out how to do it, they will realise the effort it takes and will take and many will stop. Here too you can create some barriers. Examples: You need to be a member for +3 months, you need to have participated in at least 3 tournaments, If you have abandoned a tournament in the past you will not be able to make a new one for X months.

At first I thought it would be very hard to implement a future like this. But thinking about it, I'm actually wondering if it is.
Lots of these things are probably database issues I guess.

[greenoaks]

Greenoaks, with 7903 posts I am sure you know your way around this website. With 33 tournament wins, I'm sure you also know everything about tournaments. But you really disappoint me with the content (or better yet lack of content) in your last reply. It's clear that the threshold for posting isn't very high for you. No offence.

yes, i have been here many years and in that time i'd have become rich if i was given a dollar for every poster that was incapable of clicking on the Rules/Help/Instructions tabs at the top of every single page, even the games pages on CC.

your suggestion has merit but it fails on 3 points.
1. this site is full of stupid and/or lazy people where no amount of 'making it easier to ........' will change their behavour
2. something has already been implemented through the Tournament tab at the top of the page which not only tells you how to join but provides you with a list of tournaments for you to join
3. players need to enter the thread to read the tournament's rules. your attempts at making it easier to join gives me a tournament full of players who don't know what they've joined

[P4Ssoa]

Thank you for the additions to your reply.

I understand what you say and you do have a very good point. A few questions though:
1) Don't you ever wish you could see an overview of your past and currently active tournaments? Or an overview of the tournaments you joined but haven't started yet.
2) Don't you think there are ways to filter useless players? (With useless I mean deadbeats, not showing up for games, etc...)
3) Can you not think of a way to make it work?

You can still add an introduction (with explanations, rules, etc..) to every tournament. In my opinion, every tournament should have one. In this case the join button would be below this information. (There is no way of checking whether someone has read it all, but everyone can post "in please" now too.)

The way tournaments are now is pretty basic. I think improvements here can be made and will make this website better.
Just like with every suggestion, improvements need to be well thought out. That's where you critics come in.

[greenoaks]

a Join Tourney button would also be useless for team tournaments as the button does not know you want to be signed up with Players A, B, C, D, E & F. it would just sign you up.

[greenoaks]

it would also be useless for tournaments where you must signup with a favourite map, favourite settings or a desire to represent a character or team involved in the tournament.

[P4Ssoa]

Good points! These are indeed things to think about.

What about an invite player option? (like we already have for normal games) Like this you can reserve spots in your team, in that certain tournament.

For your second post: You can make an option for the tournament organiser to enable the ability for players to choose a map + settings. The tournament organiser would still have to setup every game of course. Also I never said you have to get rid of the forum. You can link tournament information pages with forum topics. Here players can still post comments, settings, characters,... for the tournaments.

[Night Strike]

• Active tournaments: This can include a lists of tournaments you are currently participating in. For each tournament you can see the active games, and winners of those games. You can also see the round you are in. Of course, you have a link to the forum topic where the tournament can be discussed.
• Completed tournaments: You can see the winner and your own rank (or round you were eliminated)

These can, kind of, be done within the current system, they just require a different way to compile the data. Once a player has joined at least one game, the system can make a record showing which tournaments that player has competed in. The system already calculates the overall number of unique players total in Ongoing and Completed tournaments (only TDs have access), so it would probably be possible to re-purpose the data to be displayed to the individual. It can't account for people who have been replaced by a reserve or denote who has actually been eliminated from the tournament (now can it classify rank), but it could at least list the ones you may still be alive in that are ongoing and all the tournaments you were in that have completed.

Everything else you suggest has to do with more automation of tournaments, which mostly just limits organizers because it's impossible to code every single tournament structure that is run on CC.

[DoomYoshi]

Everything else you suggest has to do with more automation of tournaments, which mostly just limits organizers because it's impossible to code every single tournament structure that is run on CC.

That was my initial reaction but there is a clause in the OP that allows TOs to revert to the old-style.

[greenoaks]

Everything else you suggest has to do with more automation of tournaments, which mostly just limits organizers because it's impossible to code every single tournament structure that is run on CC.

That was my initial reaction but there is a clause in the OP that allows TOs to revert to the old-style.

but as every team or sports franchise tournament would be excluded that mostly leaves 1v1, and it is not hard to type 'in please'.

this is a lot of work for almost no gain.

[DoomYoshi]

Everything else you suggest has to do with more automation of tournaments, which mostly just limits organizers because it's impossible to code every single tournament structure that is run on CC.

That was my initial reaction but there is a clause in the OP that allows TOs to revert to the old-style.

but as every team or sports franchise tournament would be excluded that mostly leaves 1v1, and it is not hard to type 'in please'.

this is a lot of work for almost no gain.

I hadn't thought of the join issue, that's a good point, unless the join button also includes a "pick your map, settings, team name" field.

It does seem like a lot of work, but has worked successfully on other sites (Starcraft comes to mind, and yes I know it's not a website).

[P4Ssoa]

Thanks for the information Night Strike!

I however do not think everything has to be automated. You are right that automating everything would limit organizers and it is indeed impossible to code everything. I would just like to see tournaments being more user-friendly to organize.
Of course there could be a default setup for bracket tournaments. This can be automated, but the tournament organizers should still be able to create the tournament the way they want. They should still be able to make single games and invite people. Make an introduction page with the setup and rules for the tournament. Much would indeed be not that different at all from the current forum setup. But it would look a lot more professional. A lot more user friendly and a lot easier for tournament organizers (having an overview of the current games in their tournament, etc...) and for tournament participants (having the option to read and click the join button and know immidiately if you are accepted, and having the options to check your current tournament stats in a nice overview).

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Greenoaks, I'm going to get back at what you said before. "Most players are lazy!"
Well, you don't get anywhere without a little work^^ Yes it does take some work and I'm sure it would have lots of gain!
You just need to think of the possibilities and suggest them! This can be an interesting project with lots of benefits to the site.

Also, like I said before, it doesn't need to be only 1vs1,.. for team tournaments an option could be implemented to reserve a spot for teammates.
And we can always revert to the old forum style for special tournaments that can not be made on the new tournament style. (Although I'm pretty sure you can make anything work if you think about a solution)

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DoomYoshi, indeed, that was just what I was thinking.

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I agree, the current system works, but I'm trying to think out of the box. How can we make it better? How can we make it more professional?
Not all the options I mentioned were that good, but some cetainly are. Tournaments are in my opinion something that can make this website extra interesting. And it is worth the effort to improve this part of the website.
What kind of improvements would you like to see for the tournament section?

[agentcom]

I think that the tournaments tab is just as easy to find at the top of the screen as it is if it was on the left. Easier even.

One of the things that I love about the Tournaments is how many unique ways there are to create them. I would love it if something like the mod tools that NS described were available to users (allowing them to see how many tourneys they entered, won, active, whatever). And it also would be nice to automate simple tournaments (perhaps you could create an automated tournament on map/settings you want to play and wait for it to fill ... no TO medal though).

But I wouldn't want to discourage or prevent people from running the crazy, unique tourneys on this site. I know you said that you can opt into the old system, but I just think a lot of care needs to be taken with that so that it doesn't discourage either the creation or the enrollment of these tourneys.

[greenoaks]

Also, like I said before, it doesn't need to be only 1vs1,.. for team tournaments an option could be implemented to reserve a spot for teammates. ;-

i accept teams, not dibs on a spot and i'll be back with a team.

[P4Ssoa]

You are very right agentcom.
If something like this suggestion would get implemented, it should be done with a lot of care!
Overview of the things suggested above:

• The tournament organizer should still be able to make his own crazy, unique tourneys. (No automations for tournament organizer, except for the simple bracket tournament, but then he shouldn't get a medal, i agree.)
• Team tournaments should (of course) stay possible. (Some kind of reserve spot option)
• Tournament organisers should be able to put restrictions for joining (example. X amount of games played, %attendance, rating, freemium/premium,...)

Extra features:

• Users can see an overview of the tournaments they currently joined (and are not active yet, also with a link to the forum topic)
• Users can see an overview of the tournaments that are active (with the current round and a link to the forum topic)
• Users can see an overview of the tournaments they have completed. (with the round they got eliminated, who won and a link to the forum topic)

So how would it look like? I'll try to make a quick draft of what I'm thinking about:

Tournament tab on the left with subtabs: Create tournament, Manage tournaments, Join tournament, Active tournaments, Completed tournaments

Create tournament:
First option "bracket tournament" or "custom tournament"
Click on custom tournament and options will apear:

• Tournament name
• Amount of players
• Amount of reserves
• 1vs1, 2vs2, 3vs3, 4vs4 (in case of team tournaments, an extra option whether players are allowed to reserve spots for teammates)
• restrictions (Freemium/premium, %attendance, rank, rating,...)
• Player info required before joining? (If checked,an extra text box will show up. Here you can write what information you would like to know extra from players. Players need to fill in this information after they click the join tournament button.
• Tournament information (A very large textbox where all the info can be written down. Exactly like the first topic in the forum.)

Manage Tournament:
There would be 3 pages to choose from here: Players list, Tournament statistics, create games
Players list:
Here the tournament organiser can see the list of players with, if the 'Player info required before joining' option is checked, next to each player extra information. The tournament organiser would be able to change this information on request of the player.
Tournament statistics:

• Table with all players. For each player you see the amount of games they won and lost, the games they played and the score for each game (won or loss).
• A second table with stats for every round. Example: Round 1: list of players, games they played and whether they won or lost. (In this example the round would be the game label, I know different game labels are used now within one round, but this is something we should think about on how to get around that!) Round 2: List of players who made round 2, games they played and whether they won or lost.

Create games:
Here the Tournament organiser creates the games for his tournament. It should look exactly like the current create games page with one exeption: At the top, there is a box to fill in player names. When you click create game, the players in that game would be invited right away! Also when you click create game, the settings will not go back to default so you can just fill in the next player names. There will also be an option for the game label (Round name, important for the statistics)

Join tournament:

• List of all the tournament names (+ amount of players in it and amount accepted (or how many reserves accepted))
• Click on a tournament, you go to the information page and you see a list op players who have signed up.
• At the bottom of the page, you can click join tournament
• if the "Player info required before joining?" option is checked by the tournament organiser, the player will now see the message from the tournament organiser asking for extra information, and a textbox where they can write information in. This can be: favourite map + settings, character you want to play,...

Active tournaments:

• List of your active tournaments. (first the one you last joined)
• Next to each tournament, the current round (if the tournament has started yet) and you can click on the tournament name to go to the forum topic. Somewhere next to each tournament should also be the extra information you signed up with (like favourite map,...)

Completed tournaments

• List of tournaments you participated in
• Next to each tournament, the round you were eliminated and the tournament winner.

When the tournament organizer creates a tournament, a topic will be automatically created with the name of the tournament as topic title and the first post being the tournament information. Here players and tournament organizer can still discuss things in the old way.


That's pretty much how I see it. I know there are some flaws in it. Maybe we can work it out together?

[P4Ssoa]

So what do you guys think about draft in my last post?

[DoomYoshi]

II haven't had time to fully read. Why would TOs give up their medals and sign up for automatic tournaments?

[greenoaks]

So what do you guys think about draft in my last post?

we don't think much of it.

no comments about it shows you are trying to change a system we are happy with, or at the very least not unhappy with.