Clans: NFL style or college football style?

[Baker]

I like playing with balanced teams and hard fought games. When I play in a good and balanced game that is tight, CA is fun as hell.

Everyone strives for even teams in games.

Why not in clans?

In the NFL, they have the salary cap to try to even out teams and keep teams from spending their way into Superbowls to try to promote parity.

Part of me wonders if there isn't some way to have organized competition with reasonably balanced "clans" or teams.

Clan Arena surged a lot in 2006, in part because of the CQL competition attracted a lot of hardcore players and CAx at the time had a lot of map diversity attracting newer players.

Likewise, things seem a little slow lately because there is no organized competition and also nothing to entice/excite/lure new players.

This does not have to be the case:

"Quake" is on the doorstep of free and 1 decent engine + some sort of broader cheat-free away from being owned by all of us collectively.

My definition of a mainstreamable online engine is similar to console games or Doom, for that matter. They aren't hard to setup, don't have many options and always work.

A newbie should be able to set it up in 5 minutes, it should work well on any computer without touching config files or console and out-of-the-box and should have less features, not more (because the focus should be playing the game online).

[=peg=]

Part of me wonders if there isn't some way to have organized competition with reasonably balanced "clans" or teams.

I think this can be achieved by changing the objective from "winning" to "having fun". After all there really is nothing at stake.. nothing to gain or loose.. (except pride i guess.. but that is just something for people who take the game waaay too seriously )

If the ultimate goal is to "win the match" (own the other team) then the better one team is over the other (unbalanced teams), helps towards achieving that goal.. and surely this is fun for the winning team but not so much for the loosing team..

Now if the ultimate goal is "having fun while trying to win the match", then having balanced teams is better to achieve this goal (and more fun for everybody, not just the winning team).

Now how to determine the balance of the teams.. since CAx already keeps track of the overall damage dealt by individual players.. maybe the mod can also keep track of the overall damage dealt by each team based on the rates of the individual players. Then playing a warm-up-match at start could be used to rate the players and teams and use those figures to help select a balanced pick of players for the actual match..
This rate could be shown in the scoreboard / center print when players CC (for both individual players and the overall team as a result). Now players can try to get a more or less even rate for both teams when choosing a color.

This might be all way to complicated but.. ah well.. just my 2 cents on this topic

[Stung]

I like the idea if it were 1999 and the current group of players didn't have most of their time dedicated to other activities. Nate tried starting a DM league with randomly generated teams a year ago and it failed right away, despite the DMers having more of a hardcore (reliable) attitude toward quake. Considering how compromised the reward centres of the brain are for most quake players (OMG DRUGS ARE KEWL), a huge sum of money would have to be involved in any tournament style event for it to have a chance.

[Baker]

I think this can be achieved by changing the objective from "winning" to "having fun".

Ah, winning is very important.

I like winning and that's what I play for. But I don't enjoy winning if it isn't difficult to achieve and I don't enjoy losing in a vastly overmatched game.

Near even games where everyone is challenged are the most fun.

I like the idea if it were 1999 and the current group of players didn't have most of their time dedicated to other activities.

I think a couple of positive developments would be required to reinvigorate things first.

We need a reliable cheat-free instead of the honor system.

[Rampage]

I like playing with balanced teams and hard fought games. When I play in a good and balanced game that is tight, CA is fun as hell.

Everyone strives for even teams in games.

Why not in clans?

In the NFL, they have the salary cap to try to even out teams and keep teams from spending their way into Superbowls to try to promote parity.

Part of me wonders if there isn't some way to have organized competition with reasonably balanced "clans" or teams.

Clan Arena surged a lot in 2006, in part because of the CQL competition attracted a lot of hardcore players and CAx at the time had a lot of map diversity attracting newer players.

Likewise, things seem a little slow lately because there is no organized competition and also nothing to entice/excite/lure new players.

This does not have to be the case:

"Quake" is on the doorstep of free and 1 decent engine + some sort of broader cheat-free away from being owned by all of us collectively.

My definition of a mainstreamable online engine is similar to console games or Doom, for that matter. They aren't hard to setup, don't have many options and always work.

A newbie should be able to set it up in 5 minutes, it should work well on any computer without touching config files or console and out-of-the-box and should have less features, not more (because the focus should be playing the game online).

There is no reliable cheat free system. Every time a cheat-free system has been re-invented, suddenly Neil appears on servers for a few days, then completely quits Quake until the next cheat-free shows up.

There are a few players cheating right now, some of which I know and I cannot name as it will either tarnish their reputation or tarnish mine for people who won't side with me. I have self-tested methods I use in-games, and I know of a few players right now who fell into my trap and did what I wanted them to do to reveal their hacks. I know this is difficult for someone on the outside to understand, but anyone who watched some of these games and chase cammed me would understand what was done (too bad I didn't demo it).

On another note, If you want legit clans you have to go back into the roots of some teams such as DOOM or U4 and completely cleanse them of "elite players". These clans were build on a foundation of solid players and solid reputation, to ask someone to completely change their clans just for a tournament would not be viable. In terms of Quake as it stands today, there is a good load of "Free Agents" waiting for viable clans to come around and recruit them. Problem is, no one sees a reason for starting a team, if an organized tournament began, then you would see an increase of teams come together. A reward would be a positive reinforcement for players to join, but so would pride, and an organized system.

The number one thing tournaments have been missing is an organized system. I'm not just talking about an IRC channel and weekly matchups, I'm talking about a legit website, standings, stats, clan signups etc. If you did this, not only would it promote Quake in the masses it would bring back older players, and new players would be inclined to join through surfing onto the website and by word of mouth.

Create a website, gather some people Im all for it, I would help organize it along with some other volunteers. Another problem is how many spammers, and assholes seem to join in clan matches and interfere or flood people, so supervision by administrators would be a necessity as well.

Looking Forward to getting something done.

[spooker]

are we talking about sports here?

[Stung]

yeah, philosophy on how to find an equilibrial competitive system i guess. yes i talk like this irl. no im not a virgin. =)

[spooker]

i only talk like that when im stoned

[Baker]

There is no reliable cheat free system. Every time a cheat-free system has been re-invented, suddenly Neil appears on servers for a few days, then completely quits Quake until the next cheat-free shows up.

True, but also not completely so.

Wallhacks can be made completely irrelevant by not sending client positions from the server side unless the client can see them.

DarkPlaces does this.

It can be implemented in another server engine.

DarkPlaces does it for all entities and reportedly is a little slow, but there not much need to do this on all entities (can be 200-600 entities, things like rockets, health boxes, etc.).

For Clan Arena, it can just be the first 16 entities, which are player positions.

If you have a wallhack and the server is not sending you the client position at all, you are not going to be able to see behind walls.

There are a few players cheating right now

But every time things start to get competitive, players start going for the cheats.

It would happen if there were a structured competitive system.

If you want legit clans you have to go back into the roots of some teams such as DOOM or U4 and completely cleanse them of "elite players".

I don't know the answers, just the questions.

One system could be to assign point values to player skills where the absolute top skill players are 5, strong players are 4, mid-tier = 3, novice = 2, newbie = 1 and structure matches in a way that requires balance (each clan gets, say, 14 or 15 points for 4 players and can't exceed that in a match).

Otherwise, there is no way for new players to participate.

[Spoon]

I'm game for some evenly matched organized games. The rare occasion in which that happens is pretty much the reason I still play this game because it's damn fun when it happens. When I play the only reason an unbalanced game happens is because occasionally I like to play WITH ramp or WITH sting because they actually know how to be a teammate. When I'm playing public games and my teammates spam doorways for no reason and end up bouncing me in the air to get killed is very frustrating and it's nice to have the occasional break from it.

If you are serious about having some parity between clans for some decent matches I'll be willing to play with sns or tu or some clan that most likely won't stand a chance against doom or u4 or the like. Sometimes just having someone on your team that you know is really f'in good makes you play that much better.

Also, if people would end up wanting to do this I think it would be in the best interest to keep certain "bad" elements away. People such as omi and doug who insist on shit talking and excuses if things don't go their way. Such players will just drive other's away. This should be in the spirit of enjoying a game which we all obviously enjoy playing and not who is the best.

So when's the draft?!

P.S. The bigger it gets the worse. This sort of thing should be a somewhat small group of people(enough for a couple good sized matches if everyone is there, 3-3 4-4). I think advertising in irc is just asking for everyone to jump all over it and expect it to be another cql or similar event. It would attract the "bad" element I was referring to. Invite only is my suggestion, keep it private so you know things aren't going to end up getting out of hand. I know I could come up with a good sized list of people to invite from varying skill levels and then go from there.

[Baker]

So when's the draft?!

More of this needs to be thought through, but the positive feedback received so far is encouraging.

Everyone knows players start appearing en masse if structured quality competition happens.

[Cadpig]

If only there were some kind of player ranking system, or a mod of some type that could auto balance the teams.

Although saying that, every time I have played in a 2v2 or 3v3 in Europe the players tend to do that anyway.

Winning is fun, but a close battle is even more fun.

I think this can be achieved by changing the objective from "winning" to "having fun".

If it were possible to split into two people so that I could agree with this more then I would. Of course I would probably end up killing of me because there should only be so much me in the world.... but I digress...

Like the idea, not sure about the implementation thereof.

[Rampage]

Dave, those are some good ideas..

I'm not saying I would side with DOOM, I would definitely side with the weakest team.

I say we have a draft, and its invite only, that would be great.

We create an invite-only tournament channel, perhaps someone (solecord) or whomever can create a quick template based website and that way not everyone knows about this. We can get Dread and talk about administrating in case people want to play at speaknow.

This kind of tourney would also require refs, demoing, screen shots, and stats.
I would definitely be up for a draft, and new clan names can be created with the new members.

[Spoon]

Well tal, I mentioned to baker I'm not even talking about a tourn or league or anything competitive. Kinda pointless. I'm just talking about friendly pickup games that are organized and well balanced. Playing with people that you enjoy playing with(or at least don't dislike anyway). Just throwin it out there... if people insist on making it competitive I'll probably still participate. Just thought that since there aren't even that many people playing anymore that making a "tournament" wouldn't really make sense.

[Cataklysque]

I'd play