Endurance special: Has this ever been done

[gdeangel]

The idea is to push the limits of simultaneous game play.

I would have a tournament with each player playing 100 standard, seq games at the same time. They would all be 8 player games, so 800 players. It would be a 100 map scramble, 8 players randomly paired together within some type of rank buckets (wow, after 100 games, you'd get to know your players real well.) It also increases the monotony effect.

I suppose if the toolkit is available, then making the games is not too bad.

Tracking the winners would be potentially a major pain in the rear.

Games would be chained, esc I think.

[TaCktiX]

gde, I'm presently doing a tournament called Every Single Setting: Classic. It requires 90 games out of everyone in the first round. I'm running with 4 groups of 8 people (they're all 8 player games), so it's 360 simultaneously. It's NOT monotonous strictly speaking as every game is each combination of Cards, Forts, Fog, and Mode (Standard, Quads, etc.) possible.

[gdeangel]

How is it working out? Do you have any tricks up your sleeve for when it comes time to tabulate results (i.e., some kind of script to do it for you?)

[conquerAce]

The idea is to push the limits of simultaneous game play.

I would have a tournament with each player playing 100 standard, seq games at the same time. They would all be 8 player games, so 800 players. It would be a 100 map scramble, 8 players randomly paired together within some type of rank buckets (wow, after 100 games, you'd get to know your players real well.) It also increases the monotony effect.

I suppose if the toolkit is available, then making the games is not too bad.

Tracking the winners would be potentially a major pain in the rear.

Games would be chained, esc I think.

I think I'm in a tournament like that.... map blaster, not 800 players more like 96 each playing 100 maps do that's 1200 games in round 1, 600 in round 2, 300 in round 3 and 100 in the finals...

An excel spread sheet is being used to tabulate the results it's just a matter of inputting the nubers.

[Night Strike]

There are tournaments, like Map Blaster, that require every person to play a whole lot of games. I'm sure it's a huge load to keep track of. In my opinion, playing all those games at once tends to keep some new tournaments from starting because many of those players won't want to join any more until their game loads drop. That being said, I do ask from a Director's stance that you not send out more than about 25 games at a time. People only get 50 Waiting Games at a time, and it's not respectful of other organizers (or the players themselves) if you fill up all those slots.

[Gilligan]

My 8 Man Madness! has somewhat to do with that, if you want to see what it's like and take some ideas.

[Sir. Ricco]

Map Blast has done about 77 I think at the most. 1 get one player to play one 100 games will be hard. But getting 800 is just dumb. Its hard to get 100 players to join a regular tournament.

[max is gr8]

I am going to do a league style endurance, at the moment I'm in map makers setting decision finding mode

[TaCktiX]

ESS:C is working out alright for me. I've had magnified versions of standard tournament problems (people not joining games, people joining the wrong games, general disregard of rules stated in the first post), but nothing really spectacularly bad, aside from the large numbers of games I had to create. As long as you state the high number of games required to participate in the tournament, most people don't mind (though you get the ignorant ones who are like "zomg, I didn't know it'd be 90 games!" even though that's the first paragraph of the topic).

[brandoncfi]

There are tournaments, like Map Blaster, that require every person to play a whole lot of games. I'm sure it's a huge load to keep track of. In my opinion, playing all those games at once tends to keep some new tournaments from starting because many of those players won't want to join any more until their game loads drop. That being said, I do ask from a Director's stance that you not send out more than about 25 games at a time. People only get 50 Waiting Games at a time, and it's not respectful of other organizers (or the players themselves) if you fill up all those slots.

Map Blaster rounds now consist of 100 games per round so a group of 8 players will play all 100 games together. I do try to keep batch sizes down to around 35 that way people can join other tourney games. In the future I can reduce that to around 30 games. Having such a large tourney may keep some people away from others but I know that I participate in MB as well as 4-6 others as well. Although I do make sure that the other tourneys I join have low games/round. Anyway I have received great feedback I think people really enjoy the all map per round format

[SuicidalSnowman]

As someone playing in the Every Single Setting tournament, I will offer a few points:

1) The repetition is both good and bad. It is good because I feel like I know the map inside and out. It is on Classic (Shapes). It is bad because when I log in and have 80 games on classic to move, sometimes I just throw troops down and click next game.

2) I do know the players I am paired with pretty well. Some I like, some less so. However, I am personally getting a little bored of it, and am dying to add some new people to my regularly playing games.

3) People are idiots. The TD sent really clear instructions for the games, and yet most people in my group made a mess of them. I believe one of the other groups needed a whole bunch re-made. You might want to have some caveat, like a certain rank or number of prior tournaments, to assist with this.

4) You are exposing yourself to major headaches with stuff like deadbeating. Think about it, if one person goes MIA, do your other guys get stuck with 100 bogus games? Or do you have to redo 100?

5) As far as joining, and I have discussed this with the TD of my tourny, I was a little put off when I had 50 games awaiting players, and people were not joining. Also, having 90 games all starting at once, no fun.
My advice is to stagger the starts. Say 25 games per week. Amazzony does this with her Terminator tournys.

6) As for recording and staying on top of things Tacktik is insane. Everything has been almost perfect, and he updates scores before I can finish posting it in the thread. He deserves special recognition for the way this tournament has run so far!

My two cents, good luck if you do it.

Edited out wrong smiley.

[dittoeevee8888]

I doubt you'd honestly get that many people to sign up. 100 is pretty hard and...I don't know how many people are willing to get their game load that high...I'm already at 50, and it's already a headache

[brandoncfi]

I doubt you'd honestly get that many people to sign up. 100 is pretty hard and...I don't know how many people are willing to get their game load that high...I'm already at 50, and it's already a headache

I filled Map Blaster IV (96 Players with 25 reserves) in 36 hours you just need to advertise a little I sent a PM to players that have never played in a tourney. Many joined and and thanked me for the invite because otherwise they would never have ventured into the tourney forum.

[TaCktiX]

Well, I'm the crazy nut organizer of ESS:C (Every Single Setting: Classic, for the people who haven't gotten a few-bajillion PMs from me already). I took a large amount of inspiration off of the way brandoncfi handles Map Blaster. Batch games (not staggered strictly speaking), a google spreadsheet to keep track of scores (available here), and almost-daily score updates (actually, mine are daily, dunno about brandon's).

Here's my lessons learned in reference to really big tournaments:

- Don't have any complex join rules. If you want to enforce a join order, send specific games to specific people and tell them to join them all. Anything else confuses the crap out of everyone and creates a large amount of PM-ache.
- Stay on top of every phase of the tournament. When games need to be joined, check multiple times daily to see they are filling up, and bug people every day or so they go unfilled, preferably with specific game links that they haven't joined. When scoring starts happening, doublecheck people's results for yourself. Mistakes get made by everyone, and a double-check couldn't hurt.
- The rules will be broken. You can firmly state all over your tournament topic obvious things, and some bimbo will not notice it. I had 4 people drop from ESS:C when it started when they just realized that they had to join 90 games at once. The SECOND SENTENCE of the topic said how many games they would need to play, and it was emboldened.
- Have a physical copy of the games and all relevant information. I have a spreadsheet on my computer that combines the Settings Breakdown sheet with all the game links and passwords. I used some Excel auto-fill magic to instantly create auto-join links and [game] tags. And if the internet explodes, I still have a physical copy of it all locally.
- Thank people. Considering that bimbos happen all too often, thank people who give you heads-up, who laden you with tips, who don't fulfill the "just another dumb player" stereotype I'm sure organizers are tempted to accuse others of.
- Have time. I'm rather fast at data aggregation and the like, so it doesn't take me that long to compile scores (shoot, if you want ridiculous compilation, check my last data project here). For most people, it will take some time. Don't try to create something you can't keep track of.
- Ask for help if you need it. Everything is mega-scale in a big tournament, so even the smallest amount of help goes a long way. Don't be afraid to ask for it, as we're all merely human.