Suggestion: Tournament Proposal Thread

[GreatGonzales]

This has been discussed in another thread, but I think some action should be taken. There are several problems that I see:

1. Too many tournaments, both of similar type, and just in general. This reduces the value of existing, successful tournaments, and also creates clutter on the tournament forum.
2. Some people organize tournaments without the skill set, time, or dedication to run a successful tournament. This damages the legitimacy of the forum, and also ties up players who could otherwise participate in well-run tournaments.

I took a record of every tournament that has been organized so far, noting the date.

Jul. 12: 2v2 tournament [defunct]
Jul. 26: Community Tournament [Complete]
Aug. 2: 2 vs. 2 Community Tourney [Complete]
Aug. 29: Outwitters World Cup
Oct. 4: Fluffy to Gifted Tournament
Oct. 22: 2v2 Random OPEN
Oct. 23: Masters - ST tournament [defunct]
Nov. 12: Super-Duper-Titan Tournament
Nov. 26: Melodramatic Mini Mobi Tourney
Nov. 27: Clash of the Races
Dec. 2: College Basketball Tournament
Dec. 5: Hardcore 1v1 Tournament [defunct]
Dec. 28: O.W.S.A Tournament
Dec. 31: All Tiers Tourmament
Jan. 3: Micro strategic tournament
Jan. 5: Two Mans Left 2v2 Tournament
Jan. 5: Tornament testers wanted (proposal to begin several small tournaments from the look of it)
Jan. 8: Tournament for all!

That's 13 tournaments ongoing.

Look at the dates. Here is the number of tournaments organized by month:

July: 2
August: 2
September: 0
October: 3
November: 3
December: 4
January: 4 (only 9 days into January, mind you)

A picture is worth 1000 words:



As you can see, this problem seems to be getting worse at an exponential rate.

I get it - it's fun to organize tournaments. I LOVE tournaments. I would guess that, with the possible exception of Gfich, no one loves tournaments more than me in this community. However, I have restrained myself from organizing tournaments until I can justify its existence. Take my 2v2 tournament for example - there was a real need for this, since there was no 2v2 tournaments to date. This is not to say that we can't have multiple tournaments running of similar purpose and structure, but they should be limited to a certain extent. I am inclined to make the threshold for "maximum" tournament capacity fairly high. But right now, I think we exceed even the most generous of thresholds.

Ok, so I've provided evidence, I've explained why I think this is a problem, now let's talk specifics of how to address the situation. I propose that there be a "Tournament Proposal" thread in which an individual can come and present their idea for a tournament that they would like to run. Then, either the community as a whole, or perhaps a select few volunteers, would review the proposals and give the thumbs up or down. Perhaps it will just be a matter of whether there seems to be a lot of interest in participating in the tournament. I don't think that this should be super formal, I just think that we should have SOME protection from inexperienced people starting a tournament, when they A) are not prepared to run a smooth tournament, and/or B) there is not need for the tournament of that type.

"Laissez-faire" approach is not working...

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I'll also add that I don't think that any ongoing or proposed tournaments should be canceled - that would be mean! But I think we could use a new policy for going forward.

[connor34911]

I dont see the issue with having a bunch of tournaments running. I would certainly rather have too many tournaments than too few! So to look at it as a problem seems odd. For the size of this games fanbase the number currently ongoing doesn't seem like too much....if you can have 35 games going I dont see why you cant be in multiple tournaments.

I do think that it would be nice to have some value to winning a tournament. Whether there is some kind of in game icon or just an icon for the forums. This would be assuming that OML comes up with in game support for tournaments. If they did do this then tournaments could be organized by league etc. It would be a lot of fun. I also bet that there would be a lot more tournaments going on, because it seems like a small percentage of players use the forum.

[daHsu]

You forgot to mention my clan leader tournament
The large number of tournaments is getting on my nerves a little, though.

[ImperialSun]

Well, this has been mentioned a long time ago except the problem was with all the clan threads cluttering up the tournament section. You didn't seem to mention this even though it is one of the primary sources of the clutter. Clan X vs Clan Y and proposals for various clan tournaments which aren't even in progress. I understand wanting to plan tournaments ahead of time. Makes perfect sense, but how about keeping these discussion threads outside of the tournament subforum? Ideally Adam would divide the tournament forum into active tournaments and general tournament discussion. An archive subforum for defunct and completed tournaments would be welcome too.

[amoffett11]

(01-09-2013 03:57 PM)GreatGonzales Wrote:  As you can see, this problem seems to be getting worse at an exponential rate.

I guess you don't understand exponents.

I don't think there's too many tournaments. It's not as if these are officially sanctioned events by OML; all they've done is given fans of the game a forum to create and join tournaments, and players of the game are using that tool.

I don't get it how it's for any one player of the game to claim that there are too many tournaments or that "we" need to make a policy on how many tournaments can exist at any one time. Other than the makers of the game, there is no authority among any of us to say how many tournaments there should be. And every tournament has several people who don't make it in, should they just be left to not participate at all?

And as for the number of tournaments devaluing existing tournaments, every tournament has the same value, and that's not much. They're all made by fans for fans, if OML made their own official tournament, I'm sure that would be separated in some way.

[GreatGonzales]

(01-09-2013 11:40 PM)amoffett Wrote:  I guess you don't understand exponents.

Well, my understanding is that exponential growth means that the rate of increase of a variable is increasing over time at a certain rate, and I believe that is the case here. But I am certainly no mathematician!

Quote:I don't get it how it's for any one player of the game to claim that there are too many tournaments or that "we" need to make a policy on how many tournaments can exist at any one time. Other than the makers of the game, there is no authority among any of us to say how many tournaments there should be. And every tournament has several people who don't make it in, should they just be left to not participate at all?

And as for the number of tournaments devaluing existing tournaments, every tournament has the same value, and that's not much. They're all made by fans for fans, if OML made their own official tournament, I'm sure that would be separated in some way.

You're right, currently there is no authority to put any kinds of control on the number of tournaments organized, I am proposing that we create this authority. I was thinking that, if we can come to some consensus, we can go to OML with a proposal and they can give the OK, or shoot it down at that time.

I think tournaments, as with any forum creation, have as much value as the people put into them. As such I think that's worth protecting, at least a little. Maybe you don't think 13 ongoing tournaments is too many, but clearly there is SOME number that would be unreasonable. Suppose there were 100 tournaments being organized. Currently, there are no controls in place to keep this number down, I'm just trying to think of an elegant way to handle the situation. I am very conscious of peoples' feelings...I don't want to hurt them. But I do think there is a valid concern to be raised here.

[Eijolend]

As long as tournaments fill up as fast as they do currently (especially those promoted through the ingame news) - with people still leftover that don't get a spot, I don't really see the need to regulate the amount of tournaments.

The more specialized tournaments, between clans can take a while to get under way, and maybe another subforum wouldn't hurt, but I don't think it's critical yet.
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Assuming we want to put some kind of control over tournaments - how would the system work to decide who is fit to run a tournament and who's not? A pre-in system could work, where the tournament organizer would have to collect let's say a 1/4 of the participants before starting the public signups, to make sure there is sufficient interest in that tournament in the first place.

Requiring back-up organizers could help with tournaments being abandoned in the middle of things - that would be a smart thing to do imho.

Also this is a young game, and we don't really have a group of established tournament organizers that could work as a committee for future tournaments yet.
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(01-10-2013 01:40 AM)GreatGonzales Wrote:  

(01-09-2013 11:40 PM)amoffett Wrote:  I guess you don't understand exponents.

Well, my understanding is that exponential growth means that the rate of increase of a variable is increasing over time at a certain rate, and I believe that is the case here. But I am certainly no mathematician!

Actually it's not only increasing over time, but increasing proportionally to the amount (of tournaments) already present - but yeah, we people who work with such things can get a bit nitpicky about it

[GreatGonzales]

As I think about this more, I am leaning less towards a "committee" which would approve/disapprove of a tournament proposal, and more towards just an informal, unstructured thread where people can propose a tournament idea to see if there is sufficient interest. This would at least cause new forum goers to pause, and consider posting in that thread with their idea, before creating a new tournament thread of their own.

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(01-10-2013 03:06 AM)Eijolend Wrote:  Actually it's not only increasing over time, but increasing proportionally to the amount (of tournaments) already present - but yeah, we people who work with such things can get a bit nitpicky about it

Ok. All I know is, linear means a straight line, and this is a curvey line! What is the proper description of the tournament growth described above?

[ImperialSun]

I don't think the important thing is preventing tournaments but rather keeping proposition and general discussion threads out of the tournament subforum. When I go to the tournament forum I just want to see the tournaments without them being diluted by other tournament related general conversation. Also clan vs clan matches that aren't actually a tournament shouldn't clutter the tournament section. GG's basic premise is valid - the tournaments people put so much effort into organizing get diluted - even if his suggestion to limit tournaments may not be a good solution.

[amoffett11]

Quote:Ok. All I know is, linear means a straight line, and this is a curvey line! What is the proper description of the tournament growth described above?

Right now it is linear growth, it's really too small a sample size to be described as much else. I don't mean to be nitpicky, it's just one of those overused and misused words that really bugs me, like epic.