Mini Tournament Revival

[eric the espeon]

Moving discussion to here to stop DK's thread from getting too bogged down in the specifics of one idea.

First for those who were not around for the old MTs system, some useful links:
MT Guide
Newer MT Rules workshop

Everything below can and will be changed depending on popular opinion.

Mag's suggestion which everyone so far seems happy with is, in short, the plan is to have scheduled tournaments with set metagames at regular times throughout the week while still keeping in place the old system of "any time" MTs with its flexibility. Only the scheduled tournaments would be placed on the leaderboard.

Things we would need to decide are, how often are scheduled tournaments wanted, when would they take place, and who would run them. Would all tournaments be standard CaP, or a mixture of different metagames (CaP Ubers and Little Cup spring to mind)?

There will also need to be changes to the MT guide to reflect the lack of scoring on the non scheduled MTs and an extra section about the scheduled ones. We will probably end up largely resetting the TO list again, though maybe this time allowing certain people who have remained active and did well last time to stay.

[reyscarface]

I have always found mixed metagame tourneys (CaP Ubers and LC, for that matter) are way more fun to play, because theres more diversity rather than the same metagame over and over. Heck, you can even make a "special rules day" or something for a LNT-rules-MT some day, which would make things even more diverse. But thats just me :P

Also, does the same people have to direct ALL the MTs everyday? If so, why not make it varied, like for the Smogon tour.

[HD]

I think that the scheduled MTs should be bi-weekly, or if the hosts are dedicated and/or active enough, weekly. They should be at a time that is free to all, so I suggest at around 6/7 PM EST. This time is pretty universal, and mostother users not using EST time also have a nice time. EST was mainly chosen since the magority of users are in the EST time zone.

TD should be appointed for this job, and in a system similar to the previous one, we will have ranks (senior, new etc...). This system allows new ones to be appointed and inactive ones that have not PMed a certain person the scores of their MTs.

They should be in different metagames (CaP Ubers fuck yes).

The MT guide should definitely be updated to show the new rules and changes in the system. Resseting the TO list should happen, but ones that remained active and have done their job should defintely stay.

[eric the espeon]

We could have a system where any approved TO is able to volunteer in advance to run the scheduled tournaments, or have a small group of TOs who take it in turns to run them, or any number of other systems.

And I'm agreeing that having every scheduled tourney standard CaP could become bland to some extent, but there should be a focus on CaP related metagames. Having a scheduled standard OU tournament for example would seem strange, why not do it on another server? It does not really attract people to our metagame.

Edit: bi-weekly or even weekly seems quite a low rate to me, we could easily handle 3-4 a week if there is demand, at some stages with the old system I could get 5 results or more in a day.

[HD]

I think the one where TOs volunteer in advance is the best. However their should be a thread of some sort where TOs-and only TOs-could post their reservations (like the reservations for Updates).

However, we could have a 'main TO'(like Bass was) that assigns certain TOs to certain Tournaments. Say we have picked User Y to be the main TO. User X, T, and U say the times they will be available and User Y assigns each TO to the appropriate time based on their available time.

[cyberzero]

Originally Posted by Fat eric the espeon

We could have a system where any approved TO is able to volunteer in advance to run the scheduled tournaments, or have a small group of TOs who take it in turns to run them, or any number of other systems.

And I'm agreeing that having every scheduled tourney standard CaP could become bland to some extent, but there should be a focus on CaP related metagames. Having a scheduled standard OU tournament for example would seem strange, why not do it on another server? It does not really attract people to our metagame.

Edit: bi-weekly or even weekly seems quite a low rate to me, we could easily handle 3-4 a week if there is demand, at some stages with the old system I could get 5 results or more in a day.

Everyone knows that I was a huge supporter of MTs and would hold them quite often, but with server population very low and the same few people entering every tourney, it could get quite boring very quickly. If a system of approved TOs volunteering to run scheduled tourneys passes, I'd gladly volunteer. Scheduled tourneys don't seem like a great idea to me, though.
Instead, I think that a good idea would be to have a "Power Hour" for MTs, something like what Deck Knight said, but instead, during this time people would try and make sure they'd be on the server to participate in Mini-Tournaments. This way we can have unscheduled tourneys and stick to the old fashioned spontaneous tournaments, but still have the population to support the MTs.

[Beej]

cyber, I really do not understand what you have against scheduled tournaments. The purpose of having them instead of our old system of MTs is that the official nature of them and the fact that the signups are on the forums make it more of a gateway to the general Smogon community, which naturally means there will be more participants (Smogonites love their big tourneys, after all!). The simple fact of the matter is that the MTs were fun for the regulars, and not many others. This will make them more accessible to the public.

As for keeping the original spontaneous MTs that used to exist, I don't see any problem with allowing them to go on. However, I like to think that we took away a lesson from the cancellation of the previous MT system, which is that you can't run a complicated system of management for something so unorganized and spontaneous. If we allow the unscheduled MTs to come back to the server, I don't think we should have any kind of ranking system or even a system for selecting who runs them. Abolish TOs for unscheduled MTs.

Now, before you call me crazy, I would like to note that if you go on Smogon U, you will find that regular users run little tournaments all the time. They don't have a system, they just ask people to PM them for signups and then they post the brackets in the chat. Now, obviously were are looking to maintain a better standard than Smogon U in terms of keeping a shitstorm under control (no offense to any SU mods out there!), and so I would suggest the simple system of asking a mod whether or not they can host a tournament, and if the mod allows it then they will watch and regulate as they see fit. CAP isn't a very big server. If there aren't any mods on, there probably won't be many users on in general, so there's much less potential for chaos to go on.

Just to clarify, I do very much so think there should be management systems for tournaments that are scheduled on the forums, that there should be a very specific TO list and that the TO selection process should be very strict, much stricter than the previous system. This suggestion relates only and entirely to the subject of unscheduled MTs on the server.

[Umbreon Dan]

When I'm bored, I like to head to #fluodome to play a bit of mafia. I just type "!start" into #fluodome and a bot named mafiabot picks it up and starts a game. Anyone who's interested types "!join" and mafiabot adds them to the game. If it gets enough players, the round begins. Mafiabot PMs everyone their roles and the players send their commands to mafiabot in PM.

Why am I mentioning this? Well, the CAP server has a bot, HAL9000.

I think HAL could potentially run virtually every aspect of the mini-tournaments. A qualified person starts a tournament (letting everyone use !start would be too vulnerable to abuse) and then everyone joins. If enough people joined, HAL lists the players, and then provides pairings. The person who started the tournament can PM HAL the results of the battles (or maybe even the battlers!) and HAL updates the leaderboard.

To me, this seems much simpler to do than having one person do all the work. Unfortunately, we'd have to ask Doug to add the neccessary functions to HAL (and he's a busy guy as it is ._.).

[Infiltrator]

Originally Posted by Fat Sheep

Nice job copying Team Uber. >_>

Nice job coming and change the subject. >_>

Iirc the CAP's MTs were around A LOT longer than Team Ubers' Tournament. Just wanted to say that.

Also, I like the idea of scheduled Tournaments, but I also like Cyber's idea. Why not have both ? Maybe before the scheduled Tournaments, we could throw Tournaments like the old days to maybe pass the time for the scheduled Tournaments. Just my thought.....

[Stone_Cold]

I don't see why it matters who uses what and when. An idea is an idea, and an idea will be copied and make it's own idea. And it doesn't matter who makes what.....

[sheep]

Disregard my earlier post as i didn't know that CAP had MT's before.

[Infiltrator]

Originally Posted by Fat Umbreon Dan

When I'm bored, I like to head to #fluodome to play a bit of mafia. I just type "!start" into #fluodome and a bot named mafiabot picks it up and starts a game. Anyone who's interested types "!join" and mafiabot adds them to the game. If it gets enough players, the round begins. Mafiabot PMs everyone their roles and the players send their commands to mafiabot in PM.

Why am I mentioning this? Well, the CAP server has a bot, HAL9000.

I think HAL could potentially run virtually every aspect of the mini-tournaments. A qualified person starts a tournament (letting everyone use !start would be too vulnerable to abuse) and then everyone joins. If enough people joined, HAL lists the players, and then provides pairings. The person who started the tournament can PM HAL the results of the battles (or maybe even the battlers!) and HAL updates the leaderboard.

To me, this seems much simpler to do than having one person do all the work. Unfortunately, we'd have to ask Doug to add the neccessary functions to HAL (and he's a busy guy as it is ._.).

A similar idea was brought up in the past to use HAL or make a new bot for Tournament, or something like that and it got shot down or no one didn't really care about the idea anymore.