international tron tournament

[Z-Man]

If one team has 8, the other 5 (because they are only five or only five show up), then it's 5 vs 5 and the decision who plays is to be made by the bigger team. If less then five of a team show up, it's the problem of that team; the other team should be allowed to play with five players. I think that's the way it was handled in the previous tournaments.

[Z-Man]

Apparently, my assumption was wrong. Seems like if a team registers with 7, the other team is allowed to play with 7 even if only five of the others show up. It would have been really nice to know that beforehand, because that way, teams of registered size 5 to 8 are massively at a disadvantage, because it's rare that everyone can show up. It's a stupid rule if you ask me.

Well, what happened tonight is that NAFTA had only five or four (if you don't count Vanhayes, who had client trouble, anyway, doesn't matter, let's say five) players and Germany showed up with 8 or possibly even 10 people at the beginning. AdY-Lucifer decided the match should be 7 vs 7, because NAFTA registered with 7 players. I had made the mistake not to take the role of the teamleader, so the german team was in anarchy and nobody except me wanted to quit playing. Umm, long story short, does anyone of you know what happened after I got kicked from the server for TKing or how I got kicked? The first two votes failed, was a third one successful or did AdY do it?

[wrtlprnft]

Umm, long story short, does anyone of you know what happened after I got kicked from the server for TKing or how I got kicked? The first two votes failed, was a third one successful or did AdY do it?

There was no message of an accepted poll, and if you didn't leave by yourself I'd assume one of the "admins" kicked you.
Well, I left shortly after we won the match (so it was 2-1 for the german guys), together with Lucifer_arma, as an act of demonstration. I guess our team lost really badly after that, but I don't care.

I found the whole thing totally disappointing, and I would never ever join a second one of these unless there are:

1. Fair and well- defined rules (like, gurantee every team to be able to have 5 players playing if available even if the other team has less, but they can have more if the other team has too and it will stay balanced)
2. Server settings and location known a long time before the thing starts, having the server up and running for practice, and if possible compiling it to accept more than 16 players (there is a big difference for defenders if there's rubber induced wall shrinkage or not, you have to practice for that, it's two completely different kinds of defense)
3. A rule or setting that forbids talking in color all the time, I found it really distracting to see colored chats while playing and even colored CENTER_MESSAGES(!). At least they didn't use FULLSCREEN_MESSAGES, I have to thank them for that.

[Lucifer]

Heh, I've been color-coding my instant chats so that red means bad, blue means good, and green means "go". I seem to get better responses that way on the whole.

Yeah, it was pretty disappointing. I'm gonna have to say the most disappointing part for me was the failure of the german team (except for z-man!) to do the sportsmanlike thing and reduce their player count. And my judgement that they did it because it was the only way they could win stands, as far as I'm concerned. The first match we only took one or two zones, but we whittled them down every single round to 1 v 1. Now, they had numbers on their side, so they could take a higher death rate than we could, but if a feather had dropped a different way we would have won it by a narrow margin.

Anyway, here are the problems I had with the match:

1. The failure of the German team to do the sportsmanlike thing, which was to reduce their numbers. It forced us to use tactics of desperation every single round, every single second. I don't mind intense competition, but that wasn't competition.

2. Apparently nobody intended to account for ping. This looks like a "Europe kicks ass" tournament to me, to be honest. Not only did we have the disadvantage of being outnumbered, (it was 7-4 for most of the play, with Vanhayes coming in and out, and when he was there, he just drove straight and crashed, problems with his client), half of our team were playing on a European server against a pure European team. I realize that pings are a problem, but I don't really see how it can be fair when European teams are running with such a dramatic advantage. On bugfarm it's not normally that big of a deal, the server doesn't lag spike much (whereas the LOD server lag-spiked frequently), and the distribution usually works out so that each team has a mix of good and bad pings.

So basically, our team got eliminated for 2 reasons: Unsportsmanlike conduct of both the other team and the host of the tournament, and the fact that half of us quit in protest. What's the next round going to look like?

I'm going to second wrtlprnft's sentiment, next time I want clear, well-defined rules. I'm going to add that I won't participate in a tournament run by a known smeghead.

[Z-Man]

Hmm, I've been thinking, could it be that AdY-Lucifer pulled the rule that allowed Germany to play with seven players (well, actually, only six real players were on the field most of the time) out of his hat just to bash NAFTA? He's been opposed to its forming.

[Lucifer]

Possible, but now he's kinda stuck with it, eh? Sure, he can go back on it later, but how many will play an LoD tourney knowing they'll just change the rules at will? He's got his clan's honor on the line.

[Z-Man]

Well, Spain is registered with seven players as well. We can only advise its opponents (Russia next, darn, only 5) to arrive in full numbers

Edit: the One Right Thing to do, IMHO, would be to admit the "Team A registered with X players => Team B is allowed to play with up to X players" rule was a mistake, to call the match an unscheduled test match and have the real NAFTA <-> Germany match on friday with a revised rule.

[Infamous]

Last night's match showed exactly how bad this idea of uneven teams is. We had 7 and they had 4 or 5 yet we only just won, so with even teams we would have lost. The best team lost, because we had more players.


for me, having uneven teams just seems retarded, but then again, how can you tell someone that they can't play? it wouldn't have been nice to have a big argument about who the worst 3 players are or who people don't want to play.


seems an almost catch 22.

[Ricochet]

I agree. Muchly.

What I think would be a possibility, is before the next ITW, theres a little mini tournament for the country only, to find the best players for that country to take part in the actual competition. And then in the final tournament, if someone doesnt turn up, the amtch will only be played with an even number of players, i.e. if one turned up with 6 and the other with 4, 2 from team one have to sit out.

I think this whole thing was a great idea at start, but its turned crap, and i reckon a better proposal would be for the actual Arma admins themselves to organise one, that way its more certain to be fairer.

Enough from me now, I cant post in the wiki cos ive been banned, so I'll do it here instead. Was a pretty amazing match last night, very unlucky A2, you deserved to win to be honest.

Catch ya later

Alex

[Z-Man]

IMHO, one of the best (and simplest) ways to handle the player count problem is to say "during this tournament, every team can play with N players max, if they come with less, it's their problem." Where N is a fixed number, probably 5 for fortress. Then, all the problems of selecting who shall play can be calmly addressed before the match starts and people can train specifically for N vs N matches. It makes the whole thing better defined, not only do you have fixed game rules and physics settings, you also have fixed player counts. Lacking physical fatigue game elements for all but marathon matches, it doesn't make much sense to impose a limit on switching players during the match, so if a large team wants everyone to play, they can switch everyone in and out no problem.

A simple modification that doesn't take away the advantages of the previous setup, but adds flexibility, would be
"Each match, the teams are allowed X players, where X is minimum of two numbers the team leaders give, each not smaller than N (and not bigger than 8, or 7 if you want two free slots for the admin and a recorder, for technical reasons)." Where, again, N is fixed by the tournament organizer. Teams can then train and plan for N vs N specifically and insist that matches will be played that way, while two larger teams, if they agree, can play 8 vs 8.

Perhaps an important clue for admins of tournament servers if they manage to be online (also applies to the spoon): if one team isn't present with full player count, don't allow the server to become full. Members of the short team may want to join late, but can't get in.

[2020]

alex, infamous, et al

the game on thursday night was amazing
A2 may have had 5 against our 7
but their defence was superb

i learned many things
and i have madmax and newbie to thank
they just sliced us up big time

they were definitely the more skillful individuals
and probably the better team
they won the first two matches
and the third went down to 2v2 at 92-92
with them attacking us
the remaining two games were tight
and i think they lost due to tiredness

i loved it
and i thank everyone for organising the competition
and i think that organised games
are of a better quality than random start-ups
so
of course it could be organised better next time
which is the modus operandi of the developing team for the game code
trial and error
and constant improvement
(
btw
i liked alex's strict rules
that only those who stuck their names down could play
it means players will be more careful next time


as for the 7v5 argument
each round went down to 3v3 regularly
and
it was very difficult to pull back a win
if you consider the point differential
eg imagine teams end up 1v1
UK get 5x2 (enemy kills) -6x2 (teammates killed) +10 for round win
and
A2 get win 7x2 (enemy kills) -4x2 (teammates killed) +10 for a win
that is
UK get 8 points for a win if it goes down to 1v0
and A2 get 16 points for a win
which meant we had to win 2 rounds to their 1
...
does that make sense?

anyhoo
madmax, newbie, sebol158, webgamer and cusco were excellent
i hope they can get more players for the next competition
and UK will do its best in the semi's on sunday

[Lucifer]

I'm curious how you would view the argument if you had been on the team that had 4.

It was a similar situation for us, almost every round saw us go 1 v 1 in the end, and like I said somewhere else, if a feather had fallen a different way, we would have won it. And the closeness of the point spread is due almost entirely to kills, they won almost every round but the point spread generally stayed pretty close.

Who knows? Maybe we would have won it if we hadn't bailed in protest? How much does it really matter anyway?

[2020]

i agree luci
who know?
however...

How much does it really matter anyway?

maybe one day
the difference might be thousands of dollars

[Lucifer]

maybe one day
the difference might be thousands of dollars

And if it's run the same way, there's a lawsuit or three for the organizers. Put real money on the line and clear rules materialize or people get screwed.

[Ricochet]

or next time, the actual amra runners (i.e z-man, luci, etc) actually organise it, so definite rules are more likely to be set out and abided by, rather than just in a random server with uninvited people appearning in all the time and wanting to play.

another tournament as an alternative to the itw? ill leave that for you admins to decide