Sumo league - discussion, interest, brainstorming

[Fippmam]

Nice asdoof. I especially liked the part where both parties would have to authenticate on the site, that the report of a match was indeed valid.

That sounds difficult to program though. Not sure if someone would be able to look into that

[Flow]

Nice asdoof. I especially liked the part where both parties would have to authenticate on the site, that the report of a match was indeed valid.

That sounds difficult to program though. Not sure if someone would be able to look into that

I understand to many that the idea of both parties confirming sounds like a great idea on paper. I'm not sure how many of you played gamebattles, which is competitive league for console games, but it required confirmation from both parties. IMO it causes more disputes because people who are less familiar with the site and rules may not report in the exact same way. I think Concords system of winner reporting and loser disputing if needed was far more efficient. Just my opinion though.

[Concord]

the problem is, as Flow mentioned, "I lost, I'm not going to validate the result." also, the timing of match reports is very important. The order matters. Delays will ruin the accuracy and lead to conflict.

I had a think on it I've got what seems to be a good solution.

• Accounts. For the first however-many, I'll just validate them. After a good size user group exists, new accounts will be activated after x number of users vote to activate it. This should both eliminate the need for an admin to activate you, and keep out fakers and whatnot. It also keeps out smurfs and aliases.
• Here's how reporting would work. So you want to play a match. You "create new match" on the site, and decide the game-mode and the server and whether to password-protect the match, or set a minimum or maximum rating. You submit it. It shows up with the relevant information. Other users can then add themselves to the match. If it's open, anyone can add themselves. If it's protected, then blah etc, you get the point. You all play the match. When it finishes, only someone who played in it is able to go back to that match on the site, and set the results. I'm going to even timelock it so you cannot report results within 12 minutes of the match sign-ups being completed. Then they submit it. It gets recorded and calculated, etc.
• This makes it impossible to make double matches, since you need actual people to sign themselves up to your match. You can't add names to a report form, you can only ever add your own name. It's also fast and easy to report (even faster and easier than it was previously) since all user names are already entered, no need for confirmation. The only potential problem is people racing to report false results after a match finishes, but user actions will be logged, and I can work on building in overrides, where if it's a wst or sumobar, users can vote to override a false result and correct it. 1v1 Disputes will be handled similarly, with voting, instead of using me as a judge for them. Because we'll have proof of who submitted false results, we can do better than the rudimentary 50 point penalty.
• The drawback is of course the inconvenience of having to go to a website to set up matches. There is a minor benefit that the match signups can serve as a type of matchmaking system. You can see clearly what games might be starting soon instead of going around on servers. Basically like pickup. The confirmation stuff asdf mentioned has basically been moved to before the match, rather than after it. I think that's an important adjustment to his suggestion

I think voting is a key function that can help make everything run better and cleaner. We want honest things to be as easy as possible and dishonest things to be difficult to execute and impossible to get away with. democracy, man.

This may take me some time to put together. I welcome all further improvements people can think of. Now that it was violated, as Over predicted, it makes sense to build a better system, as he suggested.

[Flow]

[*]Here's how reporting would work. So you want to play a match. You "create new match" on the site, and decide the game-mode and the server and whether to password-protect the match, or set a minimum or maximum rating. You submit it. It shows up with the relevant information. Other users can then add themselves to the match. If it's open, anyone can add themselves. If it's protected, then blah etc, you get the point.

[*]The drawback is of course the inconvenience of having to go to a website to set up matches. There is a minor benefit that the match signups can serve as a type of matchmaking system. You can see clearly what games might be starting soon instead of going around on servers. Basically like pickup.

I understand that this would work well, but part of the appeal in my opinion was that it could be setup quickly. Having to get everyone to log on would create waiting periods. Possibly we could think of something that would keep the quickness attribute and still implement the security that the original idea has?

Because we'll have proof of who submitted false results, we can do better than the rudimentary 50 point penalty.

I think many were annoyed in the fact that people could do nothing wrong and lose points. Wouldn't it make sense to only penalize the losing party once the dispute has been decided? Possibly something like you lose more points the more disputes you're a part of, which could eventually lead to something like a suspension or ban.

[Concord]

both points well taken. open to any ideas that could accelerate reports while ensuring accuracy and minimizing disputes.

[Fippmam]

How about a middle-ground? Auth required to play match, and login (linked to auth) required for winner to report match. Loser wouldn't have to "agree" on the reporting - they can just dispute like in the old system. You'd have to find a way to make it really disfavorable to dispute though. Like Brok3n said, doesn't seem fair that both parties have to suffer because of the transgression of one player.

I can see how tedious it will be if every match has to be arranged through the website, so that probably won't work. I'd say because of its convenience more than anything else, is why this league had more players/turnout than the previous ones you've tried to do. It needs to be simple, secure and most of all, fun. I'd say this league had 2 of those 3 things, so the only thing that needs to be improved would be the security issue which a login/auth system would fix. Oh and just to be safe, maybe back the site up every half day or something. Wouldn't it also be possible to retrieve server logs from admins, in the case of disputes?

[Renegade]

Maybe somehow connect servers console log for irrefutable evidence, and have some people kind of read through it, and report

[asdfasdf]

I think that what you suggested, conc, would work well; I was initially suggesting that at least one of the two involved in a match confirm that it happened (not both, because obviously that would be a hassle, as brok mentioned). That would stop random match creation like we saw yesterday- however, it would still be easy to report since, if the winner reported, he/she could just confirm at that time.

However, confirmation before also sounds like a good idea, and I'm open to trying either or.

My only issue with "adding yourself" to a match is it takes out the convenience of tour matches, which was: I'm on tron, I want to 1v1, I'll go do that. I understand the reasoning behind it and it could potentially work, but I'm a little hesitant because it just makes the entire process more tedious. Idk, though, the best way to test ideas is to try them.

[asdfasdf]

Oh, Fipp kind of just said that .

[breeze]

Some ideas I have...Make specific authentication for it (e.g. @toursumo.tk), so when you see a player log in with that you know they are signed up. Make a accounts for the site, so people would have to confirm their e-mail address in order to have an active account and they'd have to login with a username and password to record results. Also, I'd really like to see the /ready command integrated in the servers.

[Concord]

the problem with anything using servers is that we would need to be integrated with the servers. It's significantly more work for an admin than just rincluding a cfg, which is what they can do now.

I went ahead and started doing it the full way. There's too many problems with confirmation after the fact, as expressed by a couple people already. I've gone ahead with the sign-up method. It's a minor inconvenience, but it's a minor inconvenience. Creating a match is two clicks. Joining is one. You've got everyone in the server, all you need to do is go create a match and have them join. It can be just as spontaneous, it just takes an extra minute. It also clears up any issues of people not knowing what they're doing, or having unregistered players and all that. It's the best way I think. We'll see, I suppose, maybe it will be too much of a hassle for you lazies .

anyway, I've got most of the core stuff done. I'll probably have a beta version for testing sometime this weekend.

[asdfasdf]

Thanks so much Conc! It was more of a suggestion than anything, idc how you do it as long as it's there: it's such a great idea and it's just a minor inconvenience. I'm still thrilled that you're rebooting it after that douche hacked it.

[Zenith]

Thanks for doing this.

[PokeMaster]

It seems to me as though the technology already exists, more or less. Half of it lies in the scripting used by pickup servers so that matches may start once everybody's ready. Commands like /ready, vote referee [player], etc. help ensure good organization and diminish the likeliness of any "illegitimate" matches. Think about how easy it would be for players to browse the server list, see a Tour Sumo server, join if there's room, and then play once there are enough players who have readied.

The other half of the technology exists in dlh's gridstats. I understand that this is probably more difficult for server admins to get running on their servers, but just like the technologies used in pickups, it requires less work of players and offers a much higher accuracy of results over manual reporting.

I really think the key is simplicity. Mainly for players, secondly for server admins, and lastly for those involved in creating the system, so long as we can make it. I'd be happy to be involved in the development process, and already have design ideas for the database to make it simple to add/remove/edit matches at any point in time and have ELO values automatically updated accordingly. I can elaborate if anybody wants me to.

[Concord]

well a holding action is in beta testing now @ toursumo.tk. should be easy to plug in input from servers if an admin or owner gains interest in such a project.

rankings there will be reset once we get the major bugs solved.
please post errors, requests, complaints here, thanks for the help

edit: the bad redirect (that gaz or brok3n likely saw) from disputing stuff has been fixed.