Ladle/Bowl Time Schedule

[freako]

Let's all discuss about the time schedule of the ladle/bowl here

Problems:
1. Armagetron: Running for: 22000+ seconds ( 6+ hours)
2. Not every armagetron player is able to play till 2 am at night for example.. ( Yes I have parents, that are going to restrict my internet acces for the next week.....)

My opinion:

1. Move it to a day like saturday?
2. Make it a 2-day tournament?

[Van-hayes]

My votes for a 2 day tourney, with so many teams it takes too long to play in one day.

[pike]

Yeah, I was glad I lost in 1/8, otherwise I'd have another s**t day at work.
I'd love if tourneys were played on saturday, not only for personal reasons - there are much more "non-fortress" or "never-played-tourney-on-sunday-cause-my-parents-would-kill-me" players.

Half of my team didn't appear - and I saw most of them few hours before the match. And I can't blame them really.

[DDMJ]

fsckvps.com, the VPS provider for some of the servers, shutdown during the 2nd round of matches (they are still mysteriously down). This caused a large delay which then grew into a humongous delay, causing the finals to start an hour and a half late. If this hadn't happened, everything would've been fine and we probably wouldn't be having this discussion. There's a big difference between starting a finals match at 12 midnight vs. 10:30pm. Anyways, I think the best solution would be to make it slightly earlier. It seemed that everyone was ready to go at 18 GMT anyways, so that should be when the bulk of the first round matches are, with the "play-in" games starting at 17:15 GMT.

[freako]

fsckvps.com, the VPS provider for some of the servers, shutdown during the 2nd round of matches (they are still mysteriously down). This caused a large delay which then grew into a humongous delay, causing the finals to start an hour and a half late. If this hadn't happened, everything would've been fine and we probably wouldn't be having this discussion. There's a big difference between starting a finals match at 12 midnight vs. 10:30pm. Anyways, I think the best solution would be to make it slightly earlier. It seemed that everyone was ready to go at 18 GMT anyways, so that should be when the bulk of the first round matches are, with the "play-in" games starting at 17:15 GMT.

On the delay problem, I found another reason

We had to play ID-2 in the 1/8 finals, they had a complete team + 1 sub, we had 6
Still they let us wait for 15 minutes,, and the only reason they give is that the previous match also started 15 minutes late, so they have the right to start 15 minutes late
Afterwards I heard they were waiting for another sub... (whats the sense of waiting for a sub if u already have 7 players....)

If hoop didn't force the match to start after 15 minutes of waiting, it could have taken ages...

If we get more of these actions we could just better throw away the schedule

[Z-Man]

and the only reason they give is that the previous match also started 15 minutes late, so they have the right to start 15 minutes late

Now, that's quite some bullshitty argumentation there. Previous delays should be, if possible, eaten up by starting following matches on time.

Technical and other difficulties happen. Sorry about those on my server during the final. It's boneheaded stupid to use them as an excuse to delay things even further, though.

[Concord]

Perhaps League play

[sinewav]

The time issue is a reoccurring one, maybe every 2nd or 3rd Ladle this becomes a problem. One of the best solutions I've heard so far is to limit the time of the matches to 12 minutes each. It doesn't stop them from starting later, but it does keep them from dragging out too long and makes it easier to make up for lost time.

We talked about time limits in Ladle 20. It wasn't dismissed as an option, but we decided 6v6 matches and an earlier start time was the solution. Well, here we are again...

* Earlier starts are good, but we can't go too much earlier because of the America's West Coast (and it's not fair for Europeans to play so late, so there should be a good compromise somewhere). Maybe start one hour or so earlier? How about 5:30pm GMT?

* Saturdays will probably cause us to lose just as many people as we gain. It's worth a try though.

[DDMJ]

* Earlier starts are good, but we can't go too much earlier because of the America's West Coast (and it's not fair for Europeans to play so late, so there should be a good compromise somewhere). Maybe start one hour or so earlier? How about 5:30pm GMT?

Unless I'm forgetting anyone, it looks like me, garisimo, and Oblivion are the only West Coast players, so making it earlier shouldn't be a problem.

[compguygene]

not true...1/3 of my Ww players are on the west coast or mountain time. These players have trouble making the start of the ladle now, after a late night saturday night.

[1200]

What happened to the idea about having an admin present in all the matches and having them force the start time whether the teams are ready or not?
If we do that i'm sure teams will learn to get their players ready by the start time.

If a team is late because a match took longer than scheduled, thats a different story but from my experience it seems like we frequently start late because players do not show up on time and the teams do not want to start because of it.

[owned]

Enforcing starting times is just a short-term solution. The best long-term way would be to spread it over two days as your-mom said. Preferably opposite Sundays.

[1200]

[quote=Woned]Enforcing starting times is just a short-term solution. The best long-term way would be to spread it over two days as your-mom said. Preferably opposite Sundays.[/quote]

No its neither short term or long term. Matches not starting on time causes delay whether its long or short.

[Z-Man]

Well, we've had our first report of a player 'collapsing from exhaustion' already. Five best of three/five matches seem to be pushing the physical limits of some people. There's ways to 'survive' this a little better (drink a lot of water, use the short breaks between matches to relax/stretch/get rid of that water again), but yeah, I'd say we need to do both. Split the event into two days if there's more than 16 teams, and have admins/team captains enforce start times. Allow for a five minute break between games, but not more. And while we're splitting the event, we can also make the first half more elaborate than plain knockout so we can handle team counts that are not powers of two in a fair manner.

[þsy]

this sounds a perfectly logical solution to the time issue. im not sure about the saturday night idea.. yes, im sure there are plenty of 'i cant play sunday night' players, but i imagine there's probably a lot more 'i wanna go out on a saturday night' players - i myself being one of them, especially after a hard weeek of work.

i think the tournament could definitely work spread over two sundays.. it would mean more regular fort (for some teams) and would also make fort tourney's have twice as much 'publicity' - i.e. someone who only plays capture the flag/low rubber etc would see that fort is the game-mode which has the most competitive play (something most players are attracted to)

to do it on a saturday and following sunday also kinda ruins the weekend, two nights in, in-a-row.

these rules should only be enforced if there are x amount of teams (so if 16 teams, two-day seems a good idea, 8 teams might as well do it in one)
but as fort seems to be forever growing in popularity, its most likely only going to increase in size