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Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby iAmCaffeine on Sun Feb 18, 2018 8:00 pm

I think there needs to be a proper place to discuss the main issues with auto-tournaments. For me personally, the biggest problem is deadbeats not being kicked out of the tournament and instead giving other people free, undeserved wins which can have a big impact on who actually wins the tournament which is absolutely ludicrous. This would obviously never happen in community tournaments. I want this thread to be a place for players to show examples, suggest solutions, and also for people with knowledge of the auto-tournament system to inform us of the possible workarounds.

I understand these issues have been raised and discussed previously and numerous times, but here we can have an actual thread dedicated to problems with auto-tournaments so that everything is easier to handle and we can hopefully raise some more awareness in finding a fix. If many valid issues are raised, I'll compile a list in the OP linking to the relevant post.

--

Deadbeats Not Removed

I've witnessed the deadbeat issue many times, most recently in the USA Supertournament 08 - Delaware. This is currently in Round 6 of 7. I'm in 5th position and about to receive 3 free wins as my opponent quit CC a while ago and yet still remains in the tournament.

These are the games:
Game 18075729
Game 18075728
Game 18075727

As I said, I'm in 5th place which isn't great, but 3 free wins could make a big difference to my contention for #1 given the score never resets in this tournament.

--

Freemium Players Not Removed

In the same tournament, the #1 spot has just been taken by osman76 who was gifted 3 free wins since their opponent's premium expired. This has currently given him the lead in the tournament, which I do not believe he previously held. The games themselves do not exist so I can't link them.

These two issues in particular directly ruin the integrity of the tournament and can prevent deserved winners from taking their trophies. Honestly what's the point in playing a tournament when this kind of thing can decide the winner? These problems have existed for too long with no action. I know that it can be done manually, but this requires a lot of work - perhaps someone could be added to the TDs solely for this purpose? Or maybe bW can fix the spaghetti code and get this resolved properly. This is where we can discuss the options.

--

Tie-Breakers Based on RNG

Metsfanmax wrote:
iAmCaffeine wrote:
IcePack wrote:The issue thatā€™s brought up the most (Least the one I hear most often personally) is the tie breakers

Can you give me an example? Is this referencing score resets? I know they're inconsistent and that could with being resolved, but I haven't seen it as an issue on the same level as above.


No, it's referring to the tiebreakers used when scores are equal -- rounds required to win, and join order. The former is problematic because in tournaments with random maps, it penalizes people who were unlucky enough to get a large map like Hive. The latter is problematic because it's not a measure of skill in any way, and biases the result in favor of whoever happened to join first (which is as arbitrary and bad as saying that if red and green tie, red always wins because red comes first in the player list).
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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby IcePack on Fri Feb 23, 2018 5:06 pm

The issue thatā€™s brought up the most (Least the one I hear most often personally) is the tie breakers
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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby iAmCaffeine on Fri Feb 23, 2018 11:15 pm

IcePack wrote:The issue thatā€™s brought up the most (Least the one I hear most often personally) is the tie breakers

Can you give me an example? Is this referencing score resets? I know they're inconsistent and that could with being resolved, but I haven't seen it as an issue on the same level as above.
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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby Metsfanmax on Sat Feb 24, 2018 3:28 am

iAmCaffeine wrote:
IcePack wrote:The issue thatā€™s brought up the most (Least the one I hear most often personally) is the tie breakers

Can you give me an example? Is this referencing score resets? I know they're inconsistent and that could with being resolved, but I haven't seen it as an issue on the same level as above.


No, it's referring to the tiebreakers used when scores are equal -- rounds required to win, and join order. The former is problematic because in tournaments with random maps, it penalizes people who were unlucky enough to get a large map like Hive. The latter is problematic because it's not a measure of skill in any way, and biases the result in favor of whoever happened to join first (which is as arbitrary and bad as saying that if red and green tie, red always wins because red comes first in the player list).
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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby iAmCaffeine on Sat Feb 24, 2018 7:04 am

Metsfanmax wrote:
iAmCaffeine wrote:
IcePack wrote:The issue thatā€™s brought up the most (Least the one I hear most often personally) is the tie breakers

Can you give me an example? Is this referencing score resets? I know they're inconsistent and that could with being resolved, but I haven't seen it as an issue on the same level as above.


No, it's referring to the tiebreakers used when scores are equal -- rounds required to win, and join order. The former is problematic because in tournaments with random maps, it penalizes people who were unlucky enough to get a large map like Hive. The latter is problematic because it's not a measure of skill in any way, and biases the result in favor of whoever happened to join first (which is as arbitrary and bad as saying that if red and green tie, red always wins because red comes first in the player list).

Oh I see. I guess this is another problem that needs sorting out. Added to OP.
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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby xroads on Sat Feb 24, 2018 8:12 am

What does removing deadbeats have anything to do with tie breakers?
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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby IcePack on Sat Feb 24, 2018 10:28 am

xroads wrote:What does removing deadbeats have anything to do with tie breakers?


Nothing, he wants to discuss / solve different problems w auto tournaments and I added a problem to be discussed
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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby jfm10 on Sat Feb 24, 2018 12:31 pm

Would it be possible that when a round begins it becomes an auto invite and players would then have to accept the games?
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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby iAmCaffeine on Sat Feb 24, 2018 2:04 pm

IcePack wrote:
xroads wrote:What does removing deadbeats have anything to do with tie breakers?


Nothing, he wants to discuss / solve different problems w auto tournaments and I added a problem to be discussed

Indeed, the entire thread is to raise issues about auto-tournaments so hopefully, we can get them all in one place and then perhaps progress will be made to improve them. I think the concept of them is great, but they could make a much bigger impact if cleaned up a bit.

jfm10 wrote:Would it be possible that when a round begins it becomes an auto invite and players would then have to accept the games?

It wouldn't make a difference. If someone goes from premium to freemium during an auto-tournament they obviously don't have the capacity to play the games. In a 1v1, that means their opponent gets free wins, and in multiplayer games just means one player is removed. If players had to accept invites and didn't, the result would still be the same i.e. free wins.
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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby Dukasaur on Sat Feb 24, 2018 3:37 pm

I just addressed all this quite recently in a different thread. Everything I said there applies equally here.

Subject: New tie breakers for auto tournaments

Dukasaur wrote:
DJENRE wrote:
Also, in case TD and mods don't want to think about it


TD and mods have thought about it plenty. This is not something within our control. The tiebreakers are coded into the system and there is only one man who can change the system, and he has a lot on his plate. Improving the code in autotourneys is not currently on his radar. Trust me, if I could get his to revise the autotourney engine, I would have much higher priorites than screwing with the tiebreakers.

My priority list runs something like:
  1. Change autotourneys to enable them to handle team games
  2. Allow autotourneys to carry a reserve list and replace deadbeats
  3. Allow autotourneys to start next round without waiting for all games to end (if it is a non-elimination round)
  4. Enable more intricate scoring for autotourneys (not wins alone but kills, streak kills, etc.)
Adding more sophisticated tiebreakers would either be #5, or it could be seen as a component of #4 and part of the same package. However, my priority list is just as irrelevant as yours. The boss is the boss, and he will not be dictated to. He has his own priority list, and the system is running well enough right now that he feels he can best put his time into something new.

If we had a staff of thirty programmers, I could see demanding this change or that change, but we don't. We have one part-time webmaster doing all the coding changes, and the body of code is a lot bigger than you might think. Changes are limited in scope and limited in frequency, and when something is running well enough, we leave well enough alone. It's not the world's greatest set of tiebreakers, but it gets the job done.

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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby iAmCaffeine on Sat Feb 24, 2018 4:58 pm

I don't see how #3 is necessary at all, and #4 would be nice but very far down a list of priorities. How come you put so much weight into both of them?

Regarding your comment about "the boss is the boss", I would've thought tournaments being won because someone becomes ineligible and gives others free wins would be a main concern and proof the system isn't good enough.
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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby Dukasaur on Sat Feb 24, 2018 5:33 pm

iAmCaffeine wrote:I don't see how #3 is necessary at all,

It isn't "necessary". This is a wish list for making things better. Improvements are never "necessary" but they can still be desirable. #3 could help speed up the timing for tourneys significantly.

In a typical tournament round a good majority of the games finish on some reasonable time frame, but there are always a few that get hung up and go to the round limit. Yes, it can be solved by making everything 1v1 or everything sunny non-trench escalating, but that's begging the question. Sometime you want to have a round that's flat rate and/or trench and/or 8 player. A majority of those games will be over in 3 weeks but some will take 3 months. It would be nice to be able to launch the next round when a majority of the current games are finish, without waiting for every last straggler. Assuming it's a non-elimination round, of course.

iAmCaffeine wrote:and #4 would be nice but very far down a list of priorities. How come you put so much weight into both of them?

Well, it's a short list, so #4 is pretty far down...:)

In all seriousness, a lot of things that we take for granted in manual tournaments are absent from autos -- scoring by kills, by unique kills, etc. Some things I find important -- negative points for killing the wrong target in Assassin, negative points for deadbeating, etc.

iAmCaffeine wrote:Regarding your comment about "the boss is the boss", I would've thought tournaments being won because someone becomes ineligible and gives others free wins would be a main concern and proof the system isn't good enough.

I think the same argument could be applied to this as to every other imperfection in the system -- yeah, sometimes people get an unearned windfall from deadbeat, but people get unearned windfalls from everything else -- ridiculous drops, ridiculous dice, turn order, stupid players, etc. As long as your chances of getting the unearned windfall are the same as everyone else's, it's just one more random event that will even out over the long run. I'm not saying it shouldn't be fixed (as you see, it is #2 on my list) but it's not a catastrophe.
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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby iAmCaffeine on Sat Feb 24, 2018 6:02 pm

Dukasaur wrote:In a typical tournament round a good majority of the games finish on some reasonable time frame, but there are always a few that get hung up and go to the round limit. Yes, it can be solved by making everything 1v1 or everything sunny non-trench escalating, but that's begging the question. Sometime you want to have a round that's flat rate and/or trench and/or 8 player. A majority of those games will be over in 3 weeks but some will take 3 months. It would be nice to be able to launch the next round when a majority of the current games are finish, without waiting for every last straggler. Assuming it's a non-elimination round, of course.

Ultimately though, it wouldn't make the tournament end any faster, so in the long run the waiting time isn't reduced. I don't see how this has an impact.

Dukasaur wrote:In all seriousness, a lot of things that we take for granted in manual tournaments are absent from autos -- scoring by kills, by unique kills, etc. Some things I find important -- negative points for killing the wrong target in Assassin, negative points for deadbeating, etc.

I've never seen people get negative points for deadbeating, just removed from the tournament. I see your point though, I use the Assassin one myself and scoring by kills/unique kills is popular. I'd just prefer to see the fundamentals of auto-tournaments done right before exploring more adventurous options like these.

Dukasaur wrote:I think the same argument could be applied to this as to every other imperfection in the system -- yeah, sometimes people get an unearned windfall from deadbeat, but people get unearned windfalls from everything else -- ridiculous drops, ridiculous dice, turn order, stupid players, etc. As long as your chances of getting the unearned windfall are the same as everyone else's, it's just one more random event that will even out over the long run. I'm not saying it shouldn't be fixed (as you see, it is #2 on my list) but it's not a catastrophe.

Yes, people can win/lose from drops and dice etc. but that's what you signed up for. This is risk and that kind of thing happens. However, winning/losing a tournament because a of deadbeat/ineligible player is more severe and not something that should be accepted as luck of the draw.
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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby Metsfanmax on Sat Feb 24, 2018 6:32 pm

iAmCaffeine wrote:
Dukasaur wrote:In a typical tournament round a good majority of the games finish on some reasonable time frame, but there are always a few that get hung up and go to the round limit. Yes, it can be solved by making everything 1v1 or everything sunny non-trench escalating, but that's begging the question. Sometime you want to have a round that's flat rate and/or trench and/or 8 player. A majority of those games will be over in 3 weeks but some will take 3 months. It would be nice to be able to launch the next round when a majority of the current games are finish, without waiting for every last straggler. Assuming it's a non-elimination round, of course.

Ultimately though, it wouldn't make the tournament end any faster, so in the long run the waiting time isn't reduced. I don't see how this has an impact.


I saw a variant of this on another website that could be used here. After some period of time has passed, or when some large percentage of the games have all finished, use an algorithm to judge who the likely winner of that game will be (say, the same one we use for judging Round Limit games), and (for tournament purposes only) use that to figure out who gets points for this round, and then start the next round immediately. The games would still finish and the winner would get CC points as normal, but there would be no effect on the tournament regardless of who ended up winning.
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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby Dukasaur on Sat Feb 24, 2018 6:55 pm

iAmCaffeine wrote:
Dukasaur wrote:In a typical tournament round a good majority of the games finish on some reasonable time frame, but there are always a few that get hung up and go to the round limit. Yes, it can be solved by making everything 1v1 or everything sunny non-trench escalating, but that's begging the question. Sometime you want to have a round that's flat rate and/or trench and/or 8 player. A majority of those games will be over in 3 weeks but some will take 3 months. It would be nice to be able to launch the next round when a majority of the current games are finish, without waiting for every last straggler. Assuming it's a non-elimination round, of course.

Ultimately though, it wouldn't make the tournament end any faster, so in the long run the waiting time isn't reduced. I don't see how this has an impact.


Actually, it would make tournaments end a lot faster. Let's do a simple comparison. Assuming half the games in each round finish in the first month, but a few drag on to the 30-round limit. (Probably flat rate or nuclear, foggy or trench or both, 8-player).

Round 1. Starts Jan 1st. Half the games are done by the end of the month, but some drag on to the end of March. Round therefore finishes end of March.
Round 2. Starts April 1st under existing system. Finishes June 30. Starts February 1st in my perfect world. Finishes April 30th.
Round 3. Starts July 1st under existing system. Finishes Sept 30th. Starts March 1st in my perfect world. Finishes May 31st.
Round 4. Starts October 1st under existing system. Finishes Decemeber 31. Starts April 1st in my perfect world. Finishes June 30th.

In only four rounds, the time required has been reduced from 1 year to six months.
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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby iAmCaffeine on Sat Feb 24, 2018 7:00 pm

Dukasaur wrote:
iAmCaffeine wrote:
Dukasaur wrote:In a typical tournament round a good majority of the games finish on some reasonable time frame, but there are always a few that get hung up and go to the round limit. Yes, it can be solved by making everything 1v1 or everything sunny non-trench escalating, but that's begging the question. Sometime you want to have a round that's flat rate and/or trench and/or 8 player. A majority of those games will be over in 3 weeks but some will take 3 months. It would be nice to be able to launch the next round when a majority of the current games are finish, without waiting for every last straggler. Assuming it's a non-elimination round, of course.

Ultimately though, it wouldn't make the tournament end any faster, so in the long run the waiting time isn't reduced. I don't see how this has an impact.


Actually, it would make tournaments end a lot faster. Let's do a simple comparison. Assuming half the games in each round finish in the first month, but a few drag on to the 30-round limit. (Probably flat rate or nuclear, foggy or trench or both, 8-player).

Round 1. Starts Jan 1st. Half the games are done by the end of the month, but some drag on to the end of March. Round therefore finishes end of March.
Round 2. Starts April 1st under existing system. Finishes June 30. Starts February 1st in my perfect world. Finishes April 30th.
Round 3. Starts July 1st under existing system. Finishes Sept 30th. Starts March 1st in my perfect world. Finishes May 31st.
Round 4. Starts October 1st under existing system. Finishes Decemeber 31. Starts April 1st in my perfect world. Finishes June 30th.

In only four rounds, the time required has been reduced from 1 year to six months.

Okay yeah, if there was never a knockout round then it would work. How often are there tournaments with zero knockout rounds though? In most auto-tournaments, every round is a knockout or ever 3-4 rounds. The only exception I can think of is the USA Supertournaments.

Metsfanmax wrote:I saw a variant of this on another website that could be used here. After some period of time has passed, or when some large percentage of the games have all finished, use an algorithm to judge who the likely winner of that game will be (say, the same one we use for judging Round Limit games), and (for tournament purposes only) use that to figure out who gets points for this round, and then start the next round immediately. The games would still finish and the winner would get CC points as normal, but there would be no effect on the tournament regardless of who ended up winning.

Maybe I'm being stupid because I have a headache, but how reliable would this be? Of course I'd assume it would usually be correct, but what if someone makes a crazy play in the last round of a game and the algorithm is then wrong? That scenario is regular enough that it would screw the system.
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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby Dukasaur on Sat Feb 24, 2018 7:36 pm

iAmCaffeine wrote:
Dukasaur wrote:
iAmCaffeine wrote:
Dukasaur wrote:In a typical tournament round a good majority of the games finish on some reasonable time frame, but there are always a few that get hung up and go to the round limit. Yes, it can be solved by making everything 1v1 or everything sunny non-trench escalating, but that's begging the question. Sometime you want to have a round that's flat rate and/or trench and/or 8 player. A majority of those games will be over in 3 weeks but some will take 3 months. It would be nice to be able to launch the next round when a majority of the current games are finish, without waiting for every last straggler. Assuming it's a non-elimination round, of course.

Ultimately though, it wouldn't make the tournament end any faster, so in the long run the waiting time isn't reduced. I don't see how this has an impact.


Actually, it would make tournaments end a lot faster. Let's do a simple comparison. Assuming half the games in each round finish in the first month, but a few drag on to the 30-round limit. (Probably flat rate or nuclear, foggy or trench or both, 8-player).

Round 1. Starts Jan 1st. Half the games are done by the end of the month, but some drag on to the end of March. Round therefore finishes end of March.
Round 2. Starts April 1st under existing system. Finishes June 30. Starts February 1st in my perfect world. Finishes April 30th.
Round 3. Starts July 1st under existing system. Finishes Sept 30th. Starts March 1st in my perfect world. Finishes May 31st.
Round 4. Starts October 1st under existing system. Finishes Decemeber 31. Starts April 1st in my perfect world. Finishes June 30th.

In only four rounds, the time required has been reduced from 1 year to six months.

Okay yeah, if there was never a knockout round then it would work. How often are there tournaments with zero knockout rounds though? In most auto-tournaments, every round is a knockout or ever 3-4 rounds. The only exception I can think of is the USA Supertournaments.

Obviously, I presented an idealized example. Real results will vary depending on the tournament structure. I think that on average the time trimmed would be substantial.
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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby iAmCaffeine on Sat Feb 24, 2018 8:06 pm

Yeah I get that, it's just I wasn't originally considering you were talking about tournaments without a single knockout round, but rather tournaments with a knockout round every four or something. Obviously in your example it would make a huge difference, but then we'd need more tournaments that it would apply to.
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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby Dukasaur on Sat Feb 24, 2018 11:43 pm

iAmCaffeine wrote:
Dukasaur wrote:I think the same argument could be applied to this as to every other imperfection in the system -- yeah, sometimes people get an unearned windfall from deadbeat, but people get unearned windfalls from everything else -- ridiculous drops, ridiculous dice, turn order, stupid players, etc. As long as your chances of getting the unearned windfall are the same as everyone else's, it's just one more random event that will even out over the long run. I'm not saying it shouldn't be fixed (as you see, it is #2 on my list) but it's not a catastrophe.

Yes, people can win/lose from drops and dice etc. but that's what you signed up for. This is risk and that kind of thing happens. However, winning/losing a tournament because a of deadbeat/ineligible player is more severe and not something that should be accepted as luck of the draw.


This particular point is a little harder to answer, but I stand by what I said: yes, it's a problem, yes, it should be fixed, but no, it's not crucial. We all have different opponents. Let's say my opponent is a deadbeat and doesn't show up, and I get three wins for no effort. Let's say your opponent is a total idiot, and you get three wins with some, but very little effort. Is there that much of a difference between my situation and yours?

Assuming that deadbeats and idiots are randomly distributed, we both have similar paths to victory.

And just in case anybody missed it, I'm not saying this shouldn't be fixed. I'm only saying it isn't critically important.
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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby iAmCaffeine on Sun Feb 25, 2018 9:05 am

Dukasaur wrote:
iAmCaffeine wrote:
Dukasaur wrote:I think the same argument could be applied to this as to every other imperfection in the system -- yeah, sometimes people get an unearned windfall from deadbeat, but people get unearned windfalls from everything else -- ridiculous drops, ridiculous dice, turn order, stupid players, etc. As long as your chances of getting the unearned windfall are the same as everyone else's, it's just one more random event that will even out over the long run. I'm not saying it shouldn't be fixed (as you see, it is #2 on my list) but it's not a catastrophe.

Yes, people can win/lose from drops and dice etc. but that's what you signed up for. This is risk and that kind of thing happens. However, winning/losing a tournament because a of deadbeat/ineligible player is more severe and not something that should be accepted as luck of the draw.


This particular point is a little harder to answer, but I stand by what I said: yes, it's a problem, yes, it should be fixed, but no, it's not crucial. We all have different opponents. Let's say my opponent is a deadbeat and doesn't show up, and I get three wins for no effort. Let's say your opponent is a total idiot, and you get three wins with some, but very little effort. Is there that much of a difference between my situation and yours?

Assuming that deadbeats and idiots are randomly distributed, we both have similar paths to victory.

And just in case anybody missed it, I'm not saying this shouldn't be fixed. I'm only saying it isn't critically important.

Yes, there is a difference. In any competitive environment there is a difference in class between teams/competitors. That is to be expected and how can the worse players ever get better if they don't play against anyone better than them? In the same way, how does anyone get better being gifted 3 wins from a deadbeat? If you play against an idiot at least you've still beaten that player.
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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby Thorthoth on Wed Feb 28, 2018 8:56 pm

iAmCaffeine wrote:Freemium Players Not Removed

In the same tournament, the #1 spot has just been taken by osman76 who was gifted 3 free wins since their opponent's premium expired. This has currently given him the lead in the tournament, which I do not believe he previously held. The games themselves do not exist so I can't link them.

These two issues in particular directly ruin the integrity of the tournament and can prevent deserved winners from taking their trophies. Honestly what's the point in playing a tournament when this kind of thing can decide the winner? These problems have existed for too long with no action. I know that it can be done manually, but this requires a lot of work - perhaps someone could be added to the TDs solely for this purpose? Or maybe bW can fix the spaghetti code and get this resolved properly. This is where we can discuss the options.


Let's try this again, shall we?

Freemium Players Unfairly Removed

Freemium players are often unfairly removed from games due solely to the color of their insignia. In many cases these players were in the lead and stood a decent shot of winning before being eliminated for reasons unrelated to game play.. I know that this has happened to me personally on numerous occasions. If CC Tournaments are to be respected and taken seriously we must not remove qualified and talented players for reasons solely due the amount of money they pay. Too many mediocre 'gold ' players go on to win these tournaments due basically to their having paid off the judges while other more deserving players were forcibly removed.

I'm not saying that there are no talented or deserving 'Premium' players, I know that there are a few... but even these worthy victors have must have the shadow of doubt cast upon their accomplishments if they won on a non-level playing field in which Silver players were excluded from competition.
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Corporal Thorthoth
 
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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby iAmCaffeine on Thu Mar 01, 2018 1:29 pm

If you don't renew your premium membership halfway through a tournament that requires it, then you no longer qualify for the tournament.
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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby Thorthoth on Thu Mar 01, 2018 4:09 pm

iAmCaffeine wrote:If you don't renew your premium membership halfway through a tournament that requires it, then you no longer qualify for the tournament.

Yep, and it sounds like a rigged payola kickback set-up to me.
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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby iAmCaffeine on Thu Mar 01, 2018 4:58 pm

Thorthoth wrote:
iAmCaffeine wrote:If you don't renew your premium membership halfway through a tournament that requires it, then you no longer qualify for the tournament.

Yep, and it sounds like a rigged payola kickback set-up to me.

Nice premium.
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Re: Let's Talk Auto-Tournaments

Postby Thorthoth on Thu Mar 01, 2018 5:24 pm

iAmCaffeine wrote:
Thorthoth wrote:
iAmCaffeine wrote:If you don't renew your premium membership halfway through a tournament that requires it, then you no longer qualify for the tournament.

Yep, and it sounds like a rigged payola kickback set-up to me.

Nice premium.

Shut up, yes, I'm currently Premium, probably for the last time, but for the majority of my days here I have been Freemium and will be again. In any case, I don't think I'm somehow better when my insignia is Gold, but I admit it does make life easier around here, maybe too easy.

Besides, I've always paid for my Premium with my skill at earning credits,, which probably still makes me a second-class citizen around here, since CC's bottom line is all about the generation of cold hard cash...
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