fourth tronic ladle -- stage 1: teams

[2020]

sunday 1st october 2006

stage 1:
stick your name down on the team-list:
http://wiki.armagetronad.net/index.php/ ... /Team_List



the wiki has been revamped
a simple procedure outlined:
http://wiki.armagetronad.net/index.php/Ladle-4


the only way this works well
is if everyone does their bit
ahead of time...
so be proactive
and stick your name

only your name
on the team list...
and then inform your team-mates to do it too

and that way
all players will have an idea of what is going on
on the night!

[ed]

Seems like a lot of work for a game of tron.

Everyone put their own name down and only their own names into teams. Good idea.


Then, perhaps....
A cut off time for enrollment.
Round Brackets are decided randomly from the final teams/players by the main organiser.
Server admins are asked whether their servers are available at a given time for use in the Ladle.
Once confirmed, teams are told in advance who and when they'll be playing.
Everything tidy and organised beforehand. And with very little effort.

Why have 50 odd players running around on the night not really knowing what's going on, who they're playing or where.
From my experience in the last 2, this is what has happened.

I'm not saying it wasn't fun, had some good games. But organisation was poor, maybe time to rethink it.

edit: maybe I should read the wiki page first. I see most of this is taken into account.

[Infamous]

i agree with ed here.

why all this irc stuff? its not needed, you need to keep it very simple. imo, you should take the names down, have a deadline for team signup (say 2 or 3 days before the night) after which you randomly set up who plays who and where and when, and who plays the winner of who; all the way to the final. Have that visible on the front page of the ladle wiki, then everyone knows what to do and there is much less confusion.

i'm not having a go 2020, but i think that there is a lot of potential in the ladle(it's already pretty popular), and with correct organisation it could be very very good.

[2020]

thanks ed and inf
reasonable points
but i am always working within the parameters of Tronic
which is a kind of thought experiment:
that is
for the system to be organic
and easily expandable to deal with
1,000,000 players

(
for me
it ain't fun
if the current system
couldn't in theory
grow to that kind of scale


The basic problem as forseen by many, is not knowing who actually turns up. So, if the brackets are determined too early, there is not enough flexibility in the system to deal with present and actual situation.
from
http://wiki.armagetronad.net/index.php/Ladle_Feedback
which has some pretty reasonable feedback too

[ed]

This system can't deal with 50 players.
Can you imagine 1,000,000 players roaming around saying things like..
"who we playing?"
"I dunno, is it SL?"
"dunno, where we supposed to go?"
"I thought you knew"
"I dunno"

Which was the kind of things that have been said during the last 2 at least.
The current system has been tried, and in my eye's, failed.
We had a match, CT v's SL. SL won.
After some confusion it was decided that SL would play AW-A I think, or was it AW-B? but most of SL had left out of confusion, or maybe they got lost, I don't know. So the team that played AW-A(or B, I can't remember, it was all a bit confusing) called SL consisted of me, 2 or 3 SL and a LOD member or 2.
AW-A then played AW-B in the final, I think. And AW won, well done.

I don't think AW A/B were necessarily the best team. They were maybe a bit less confused than the others, and not being tied to a clan were free to roam. Or maybe they checked the wiki/kept in touch better. Truth is, not everyone wants to have to do this. They're more interested in playing the game.

I had a couple of good games on the night with good quality players. Which for me was all it was.
The tournament aspect was just running along in the background making matches a bit more confusing to set up.

[2020]

heheh
you are right
ed
there is plenty of failure in it...

This system can't deal with 50 players.

it can...
but it is very messy...
i certainly wouldn't put my faith in it working for 100...

experimentation
involves getting it wrong

unlike working with machines or computers
which we forgive and know the fault is our own if they don't work
working with social dynamics and self-organising
allows us to proportion blame a lot

the only way out of that
is to trust...
which i do...
not sure why...
but i do

i won't take your criticism personally
i could only do that if i was in charge and controlling it all...
nope...
you are criticising the system
and it certainly needs a critical eye or two to get it working...
so
thanks ed
for your feedback

[ed]

Ok, I know I'm not alone in my views of the organisation(or lack of it) of the ladle.

How about it goes up for a poll?
A simple vote:

Leave the ladle as it is, I think it works

or

Let's organise matches/team/locations before the day of the ladle so everyone knows where they stand.

If the first option wins, you'll never hear another peep from me on the subject.
If the second wins, we'll have a go at organising it a bit next time.

[2020]

do you think i got this far
relying on people's opinions?

i still think there are plenty of people
who still don't really know how self-organising works...
i certainly don't
so...
can we delay that poll
until we have a working system...?

and then
we can compare
fairly
a system which is fixed and controlled by admin
and
a system which is flexible and facilitated by players

otherwise
we have a false option of
an incomplete system which obviously has problems
and
a traditional methodology

[Lackadaisical]

I think it would be fair to give ed's idea a chance, since we have been trying to do the self organising thing for three ladles now. Time for a change perhaps?

[2020]

lack...
if you look at how the next one is structured
it follows very closely what ed is suggesting

the brackets are just about fixed
instead of a few days ahead of time
just one day...
but the system needs to be flexible enough to deal with last minute things

i remember the first warnings when i proposed spoon...
people just don't turn up...
that's the toughest bit
the only bit to get right...
the timing...

if we are strict with timing
everything will fall into place...
we don't need more constraints...

you did a fantastic job of trying to get this last ladle working
and i hope you don't get too frustrated with other people's contributions...

instead of expending energy on trying to persuade me not to do this
could you expend some energy trying to get it to work...
well ahead of time...
so that durka or whoever
doesn't get confused
and try to organise everything last minute

i just heard one of the speeders tell gar
that they didn't know the ladle was on...
imagine that...
not one of the speeders knew...
i didn't post notes on clan forums
as i did at first...
because i thought people should be starting to get the idea...


if you really want to discuss it
check out the stuff i have written on the wiki
especially tronic
and engage with it

i am not going to just throw up my arms and give up
am i?

besides
there already exists a competition like your describing:
the international world cup

[wrtlprnft]

I think we should try this one the way 2020's suggesting it. We do have a deadline for the brackets now, it doesn't matter if it's just a bit less than a day before the event starts, that's still enough time to write a brackets page (just replace the numbers by the actual team names). As for fixing the servers, I think that's a bad idea. Servers might go offline last minute (like US fortress), and the teams can decide where they get the fairest lag themselves. We just need a way for team captains to stay in contact, and a server with a running game is just too chaotic to have a good conversation. Additionally I can only connect to one server at once, my graphics driver doesn't take on more.
IRC doesn't take long to set up, and it's a reliable and quick way that doesn't take up a lot of resources. How the captains stay in contact with their teams is their buisness.

[Infamous]

is it me or did 3 teams just disappear from the ladle team list???

[wrtlprnft]

That probably was some random idiot (.TIP clan?! never heard about it…) just being stupid. Reverted his edits and blocked his IP for three days.