Conquer Club

Here is CC Auto Tournaments advice and my comments in Red. For Tournaments running THOUSANDS of games per month, CC optomising the site to support them is a must.

Maybe CC will look to improve what is here already:

Auto Tournaments
Setup

Auto Tournaments are set up by Conquer Club Admin or the Tournament Team.


Types

Currently all AutoTournaments are Elimination, meaning that players get allocated opponents in each round and play a series of games against those same opponents. When the round ends a certain number of players will progress based on results. Once eliminated from a round there is no second chance.

Problem 1: "When the round ends a certain number of players will progress based on results" - This does not allow for a Tournament to Progress until ALL games in the previous Round are complete. Very Slow when you want to run a MASSIVE Tournament.

Problem 2: "Once eliminated from a round there is no second chance." - So, onlyKO's can be set up. Unless you want to run lots of small Tournaments and try to pass it off as one big Tournament. What is here is okay for the most basic of Tournaments. But, in my experience, players want more.

Players
Each Tournament is configured for a certain number of players and will start after that many players have joined. Auto Tournaments are initiated by background processing on an hourly basis.

Problem 3: Maybe this is why Tournaments start with 8, 16, 32 runners? It doesn't help if you want to attract as many players as possible.


Games
Auto Tournaments can involve every possible type of games, with the exception of Team Games and Bot Games. These are being considered for future integration. Some Tournaments may use the same game settings throughout, others may change the settings, or choose random settings.
Schedule
An automated may have a scheduled start time, which will be indicated in Conquer Club Time (CCT). The tournament will not start before this time. If the tournament is full at the scheduled time, it will start. If it is not full, it will revert to being an unscheduled Auto Tournament. If the tournament is a Speed Auto Tournament you should plan to be online at the scheduled time or your games will start without you.

Problem 4: Automated start times of Tournaments is good. But how about Automated start times of Tournament Rounds? Because, without that, you can't automatically run HUGE Tournaments in a League format.

Entry Rules
Tournaments can have a variety of entry rules to restrict entry to different types of players. They may be restricted based on Membership Type, Score, Rank, Games Played, and more. The Entry Rules are applied at the time of joining the Tournament. Note that it is possible that after joining the Tournament player may stop meeting the Entry Rules, however the Entry Rules are only applied upon joining.

In addition to the Entry Rules of the specific Tournament, if you do not qualify for the type or quantity of games being played at the time of joining, then you will not be allowed to join. If you join a Tournament legitimately then become unqualified for some of its games before it starts, or while it is running, then when a new round starts you will be precluded from entering any of those games you are not qualified for. Those games will be played with 1 less player or awarded to the remaining player if only 1 player remains.

Players that have been inactive (not logged in) for 7 days at the time of the tournament attempts to start will be dropped from the tournament. The tournament will then await for additional players to join.
Entry Price
Tournaments can have a price for entry that may be a combination of Inventory items or Credits. Any such price will be withdrawn from your player account upon joining. Any entry cost is refunded if you unjoin the tournament.
Rounds

Tournaments proceed in a series of 1 or more rounds.
Each round has its own rules for Draw Type, Game Settings, how many games each player plays and how many players progress to the next round.
After each round players are eliminated according to the scoring system described below. Each round allows a certain number of players to progress based on their ranked Scores after all games are complete.
The next round will start when every game from the proceeding round is completed. Players not qualifying for the next round will be eliminated.

Scoring
By default scoring is based on number of Game Wins over the entire tournament. However, individual Rounds may Reset the scores, so that the scoring will begin again from that round. When the first round of the Tournament is seeded by score, the player's score at time of joining the tournament is used in that round only. Players that have been inactive (not logged in) for 7 days at the time of the scoring will have their score zeroed.

Problem 5: No scoring system available for League situations

Ties in Score shall be broken by the following rules, applied in order:

Percentage of wins in the tournament as a whole
The cumulative number of Game rounds required to win the games they have won in the tournament (since the last point reset, or the start of the tournament if no point reset has occurred). Note: winning in less rounds is better.
The order in which the player joined the tournament (first player to join wins)

Draw
Matchups for each Round can be:

Seeded by Score: Players are ranked in order of their Score, which will be their Player Score in Round 1, then their Tournament Score in subsequent Rounds. Tournament Score is based on the number of game wins in the Tournament. Ranked players are then matched using a simple algorithm. For example in a 4 Player Round the matchups would be: Seed 1 v Seed 4 and Seed 2 v Seed 3.
Random: Players are matched up randomly.

Play Order
When each game is generated the Play Order is randomized.

Problem 6: Let the Organiser dictate who goes 1st in Tournaments.

Prizes
Prizes may be issued for Auto Tournament wins after the Tournament is completed. Every game must be completed before prizes are issued, even if the winner is already decided from the completed games. There are currently the following types of prizes:

Medals: A Conquer Club Medal, usually a Tournament Achievement Medal.
Credits: Conquer Credits.
Entries: Entry to other Conquer Club events such as The Championships, The Conquer Cup or Community Run Tournaments.
Inventory: Conquer Stars and other items of inventory.

Automation
Some things for Auto Tournaments are updated as they happen, for example Scores changing. Major Tournament transitions in regular (non-speed) Tournaments such as Rounds starting and ending, the Tournament ending, and prizes being issued are handled by background processing that generally runs hourly. A few things, such as prizes for Entry to certain events, may be handled manually at a later time.

Problem 7: Have automated Scoreboards and League Tables for each Tournament. A lot, not all current Tournaments that players have no idea at which point or position of the Tournament they are in. It doesn't make for good Touraments.[/color]

Some people will say, ah but he is running a Tournament where 16,000 games have Completed in 4 Months and just wants to change it for his own benefit. That's not the case at all. I want to see fun Tournaments for players to play in. Huge ones that offer complexity. Without some of the changes above, this remains a huge challenge for any Tournament Organiser looking to do so. It's time for CC to step up to the challenge!

YOUR ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!!!


AND MANY THANKS / UTMOST RESPECT!!!

also they Play Order is really an issue (randomized).

It seems however if you accept one game last you can influence the rest of the play order a bit, thus influencing 3 games to start vs 1 game to go last (but maybye its just the random part playing tricks on me).

Anyway, i always accepted immediately and found myself always starting 4 or 3 games out of 4 times last..

So that IS an issue, especialy on certain maps where round one pretty much dictates the win

IN ALL CASES: UTMOST RESPECT TO YOU and in debt to your efforts!

Son!c wrote:YOUR ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!!!


AND MANY THANKS / UTMOST RESPECT!!!

also they Play Order is really an issue (randomized).

It seems however if you accept one game last you can influence the rest of the play order a bit, thus influencing 3 games to start vs 1 game to go last (but maybye its just the random part playing tricks on me).

Anyway, i always accepted immediately and found myself always starting 4 or 3 games out of 4 times last..

So that IS an issue, especialy on certain maps where round one pretty much dictates the win

IN ALL CASES: UTMOST RESPECT TO YOU and in debt to your efforts!

This, as many other suggestion, went through site wide poll and with high favorable results, it has been then forwarded to the webmaster for implementation approval. This site is handled by one man and everything takes time.

As far you topic of concern, the site poll thread can be found here:

viewtopic.php?f=634&t=233770

We hope for this to be part of the auto tournament ruling/coding soon...but who knows when but the webmaster himself.

Craig, I believe we have had some conversation before you started Season Zero of this league and explaining what can/can't be done and finally stating your event format can't be supported by the auto tournament [AT].

This AT tool is far for being used for complex structure that has multiple score systems (2-2=1pt, 3-1=2pts, etc...), I can't see a way that webmaster would even think about spending to maybe finding a way to code for automatically invit player one at the time. On the other end, with the upcoming auto-snapshot (I hope it will be soon), this way of thinking would not make any sense anymore since the player who do not start the face-off would get a snapshot anyway.
Going first in the game should remain random but that poll I mentioned in the above response to Son!c, if webmaster implement it, it would at least even out the start. Even in manual mode, as you can see, doesn't if you invite the away player first, he has still a chance to start one or more AWAY game which do not make any sense again for you to spend extra time inviting one by one, rather than inviting both players at the time you are starting a new match day.

During my time in this site, I have seen several complex and fun tournament that goes outside of the regular bracket style, league style, round robin style tournaments. I'm sure you too as well seeing you started to play here back in 2007.
The issue is that the decline in member does go along with the decline of Tournament Organizer.

Decline is surely not completely due to the fact some of the stuff do not get updated quick enough, it is simply the nature of today's online gaming that attract more players than other game type, such as shooting game, war games, Sci-Fi games that offer HD graphics on device like phone, tablet. Even now with CC having an app, will most likely not bring more member. RISK is a popular game but I bet most of the online gamers would prefer to play when they want and not being dictate by a clock and forcing them to come once or more a day at a time that may not suit their current living. Speed game was a good way to enjoy CC when you had 10-15 minutes to kill, but the site is way too slow and more often erratic (access denied) than before, thus will piss off player when it happen in the middle of a speed game, I know it will to me .

All I can hope is we can see soon some changes from those site wide poll and bringing suggestions that could help breaking some of the pest that cause players to be unhappy (including myself). The first poll I made was back in June last year and still no sign of timeline for implementation.

Hi Mad

The problem is, the cat is out the bag.

CC needs to prioritise improvements to meet player demand.

With GeneralFault's expertise on Excel, with Me and others additional help. The Super League is proving to be a massive amount of work. To the extent that, without some level of automation from CC it won't be able to continue long term.

I know I can't go back to playing in very basic Tournaments. I don't know how many of the 230 Super League players feel the same, I reckon quite a few. So, I hope we can continue the Super League. All be it CC improvements are now critical to that.

Here they are, in order of importance:

1. A series of matches must be able to be set up from Excel. Matches Scheduled to be set up by date. With Game Labels. This allow's League Tournaments.
2. Games to be set up with only 1 spot filled. This allows HOME and AWAY games. The home player can be manually invited.
3. Results must be automated - This only needs to be by game score. i.e 2-2, 3-1. etc. The organizers can create League Tables off the back of automated results.

You are getting 1st sight of this Mad to allow you to mabe feedback to CC. I will feed back to the players over the next week or so what I have suggested to CC. We are good for another Season, which, is going to last another 2 months, and with the end of this Season, we have 11 weeks to improve things.

Hopefully CC will see the benefit of making improvements.

Since mad is saying updates are unlikely, why not spend the time and energy seeing how to adjust the tournament itself so it retains its fun while not requiring automation?

I’ve had a few tournaments that I’ve done and ultimately have been looking at ways to do them again slightly different so the end result is the same. Unique and fun things without the overhead (or at least not crushingly unrealistic burden) or find ways to fit it to the automation that is available?

"Currently all AutoTournaments are Elimination, meaning that players get allocated opponents in each round and play a series of games against those same opponents. When the round ends a certain number of players will progress based on results. Once eliminated from a round there is no second chance."

- The current options are a KO Tournament where Rounds need to complete before another starts.

It is completely useless.

I'm not going back to participating in simple Tournaments. It is time for CC to step up to the mark and allow better and bigger tournaments to be produced in my opinion.

You may think CC improving the site is unlikely, if that is the case, so be it.

They do allow those tournaments to be produced, just not automated.

Break it down into something smaller and more manageable then perhaps? Or don’t. That’s your choice.

Craig25 wrote:- The current options are a KO Tournament where Rounds need to complete before another starts.

It is completely useless.

It's ridiculous statements like this that ensure you and your hyperbolic, toxic rhetoric are ignored by anyone who might care.

I see a Foed Player of mine has responded......Best to be ignored

Anyway, back to important stuff.

To modify the Super League to meet existing AT capabilities this is what would happen:

- A Season would last 2 years instead of 2 months as a new round of games cannot start unless all previous Rounds are complete. So no Match Up every 4 days.
- No HOME and AWAY games.
- No HOME Maps.
- Only 1 Map per player could be used.

So, in essence we don't have a Tournament resembling anything like what is in place at the moment.

To run a Tournament with over 200 Players and circa 3,500 games every month, this would need to happen:

If CC can set up Rounds of games EVERY 4 DAYS from a Fixture List with only the AWAY player added to the Match and the HOME player to be manually invited. We have an ongoing Tournament.

If CC are not prepared to improve the site to accomodate this. That is entirely their prerogative.

I would say, I do not speak for the 200+ Participants in the League, but I'm not going back to participating in very basic Tournaments. That is my prerogative.

Totally agree!

The Sepp Blatter Super League is AWESOME and I am loving it more than pretty much any other tournament. Would be great to get support so that the burden of organising and running it can be reduced

critical to automate the games as this must be the most time consuming aspect of setup and a crushing workload for the organisers. this can be that hard to code can it?

jseal wrote:critical to automate the games as this must be the most time consuming aspect of setup and a crushing workload for the organisers. this can be that hard to code can it?

100% agree!!! Other tournament organizers would also benefit from this scaffolding.

Really interesting discussion, the super league tournament is excellent as its keeping players involved, as someone that is a clan, i am getting tired of as there aren't many games being played, and its seems to take an age to set those up as it is.

I can see the work that Carig and the team have done to keep folks in the loop - which also helps. But the work that goes on to make it happen is massive and so they could do with the help. There must be a solution to some of the things that Craig is seeking, granted it may take time to do it, but surely it's worth it given the game play enjoyment of the super league tournament.

Peace. Coyote.

5 Weeks have passed since Post - No engagement from CC on any improvements.

Craig25 wrote:5 Weeks have passed since Post - No engagement from CC on any improvements.

Mad has posted in the thread so seems like he engaged your post, but if your bar for timeline is commenting every 5 weeks nothing happens - I think you're going to be pretty disappointed.
Even stuff thats "approved" and shown community support and is on the list of things to do waits for months and months without any sort concrete direction.

I appreciate the efforts Craig25 and Pack .... keep at it.

Craig25 wrote:5 Weeks have passed since Post - No engagement from CC on any improvements.

Craig, i have replied to all your PM as well asking for update, as unfortunate the answer was, it is the answer.

Your League won’t be able to use Auto tournament feature, I explained the reasons more than once.

Your concept is colossal and you all are doing a great job keeping the pace, but there won’t any such implementation any time soon, if any time…

I also explained the invit process has no sense the way it is designed since you are still under the CC odd with starting player…There is no way webmaster will code start game based from « home » set, therefore the fact you are inviting players in 2 waves can be remove and this would cut the login/invitation process.

Same for the scoring, on CC a win is a win, coding the win point amount from a match scores, most likely won’t be available even though i would live to have this while setting up an auto tournament.

Hi Mad

In short, your reply was:

- It was not you who makes the decision.
- You have asked for a load of stuff to be changed and almost nothing has been changed.
- Therefor it is highly unlikely CC will do anything to help.

As it is not your decision, I await the person at CC whose decision it is to reply.

The mail wasn't directed at you Mad, you can reply as much as you like with the best of intentions. But, if you can't make the decision on whether to help, it is pointless.

All you can do is put it in front of the correct person to make a decision. And as far as I am aware, you have done that and they have not replied.

Craig

Craig25 wrote:Hi Mad

In short, your reply was:

- It was not you who makes the decision.
- You have asked for a load of stuff to be changed and almost nothing has been changed.
- Therefor it is highly unlikely CC will do anything to help.

As it is not your decision, I await the person at CC whose decision it is to reply.

The mail wasn't directed at you Mad, you can reply as much as you like with the best of intentions. But, if you can't make the decision on whether to help, it is pointless.

All you can do is put it in front of the correct person to make a decision. And as far as I am aware, you have done that and they have not replied.

Craig

That person is bigwham.

Sun Sep 25, 2016 5:38 pm

That is the last time bigwham posted in the public forum, on any topic.

Guys like Mad speak up, because they know the webmaster doesn't post in public and try to explain things as middle men. They dont have decision power / authority over anything, but they interact with bigwham and can point things out that has community support, but ultimately its up to him what gets implemented, or what doesn't. And they won't know what his exact plans are or what he's doing until he announces it to the team.

So making threads like this might help organize some thoughts, might make it easy to point someone in the direction of the conversation, but ultimately is mostly unreasonable to expect large scale changes on any level within a short period of time. Even small changes take a good chunk of time.

This is why people have encouraged you to spend some time looking for other ways you can do things, or different style tournaments to run, or whatever. Its going to be energy far, far, far more productive and better spent. You can do whatever you like, Mad's just trying to help you not waste your time complaining about something thats not going to change.

Hi IcePack

I will be disappointed if he doesn't reply, but that is entirely his and CC's prerogative.

As the thread has pointed out:

- The Tournament Organising Capability is shocking from CC.
- There is a massive appetite for better Tournaments from players.
- I don't think I will be the only player massively disappointed that the Super League will not continue.

NOTE: No Tournament anywhere near the complexity of the Super League can be in anyway automated. So simplyfying it isn't an option.

But as above, if the Decision Maker (on these improvements) at CC doesn't feel the need to reply or get involved. That is entirely their decison.

Craig

At the end of last Season (Sept 8th). The Super League asked on this Forum:

1. For Super League Games to be Set Up automatically by CC every 4 days (from an excel fixture list).
2. For 1 Player to be inserted as the Red army (leaving Me to manually invite the player on the Green Armies).


The above is all we asked for.


CC have NOT AGREED to do anything to keep the Super League going.


The Super League has 220 Players and 23,244 games played so far.

A colossal amount of work and effort from players but a lot of the players are absolutely loving it. Still no help is on offer from CC.



One person has the authority to offer help to the Super League: BigWham

CC Mods dont have decision power / authority over anything, but they interact with bigwham and can point things out that has community support, but ultimately its up to him what gets implemented, or what doesn't. And they won't know what his exact plans are or what he's doing until he announces it to the team.

Sun Sep 25, 2016 5:38 pm

That is the last time bigwham posted in the public forum.


So although CC has NOT AGREED to do anything to keep the Super League going. The closest I have managed to get to any sort of answer was Mad telling me it was highly unlikely CC would do anything. Although, in his latest post on this forum he did mention some stuff we have not asked for. It is only the 2 things we have asked for, see above.


The Bottom Line is. The SBSL will be moth-balled at the end of the Season. And, from Mad's most recent post on this forum, it will never be resurrected as CC will probably never make the changes required to improve this Tournament and to allow other more 'complicated' and larger Tournaments to be ran by other Tournament Organisers.


COP26 is coming to Glasgow soon which is where I live. And we are all aware of the Climate Countdown. The Countdown that says if nothing is done, the damage to our planet will be irreversible.

Obviously the Climate Countdown is a matter of Life and Death.

But, for us Super League Scudders, the RISK Countdown is more important than that.....................................


10 MATCH DAYS ARE LEFT to go to SAVE THE SUPER LEAGUE


So here are our choices:


1. Back in the Box: CC appear to be saying we should all just forget the Super League ever happened, jump back in our box, keep paying our $29.99 and go back to pre-Super League CC.

or

2. Protest: We take the radical option of holding a protest in order to bring Big Wham to this forum and pay all 220 Super League Players the Courtesy of replying and giving us a definitive answer to our request. We don't ask for much.


So, it is your choice Troops. Choose 'Back in the Box' or 'Protest', as with everything in the Super League. The players decide where we go from here.


ACTION REQUIRED: EVERY PLAYER SHOULD:

a. Follow the Link below.
b. Reply to Thread and type either 'BAck in the Box' or 'Protest' and leave any other comments you have. They are all welcome.
c. Then go to the Tournament page, download todays 'LIVE' League Tables and marvel at your League position.




Some final notes on the subject Troops. The Mods who have replied are doing a great job on CC. The site wouldn't function without them so this isn't personal at all. It is all about getting CC to show the site a little love! It needs it!

If 'protest' is the majority winner, Any protest would not harm CC at all. It would be a protest for us to demonstrate to all that Super League Players ain't happy at the CC attitude towards this and other Tournament capabilities and may I add, the lack of love shown to the site as a whole.


Get voting Troops, Reply to this this and Type: Type 'Protest' or 'Back in the Box'

My vote is PROTEST

protest!

I love the tournament format. Why?
Many leagues and a chance to move up or down in seasons
Home/away matches - avoids the "12 hours courtesy rule" and makes the tournament more efficient.
The scale of it
The ability to follow the status and points in the various leagues (through Excel files today - could be presented online in the future?
The humor and frequent updates of the crazy organizer Craig25

Espen

Also In Antwerp, Belgium we PROTEST