Greece CLOT did not die , because of lack of praticipation.
Greece CLOT did die, because you changed it for the worse.

Be thankful that Fizzer set up this game. For who? For us.
Just wait, he's probably going to fix it as soon as he can, and has a better idea.
Like he said in the blog, he has a major idea he's working on he's probably busy. It's also possible that the major idea he's working on is Ladder stuff?

Gui - Lived long enough to become the villain of CLOT city.

I agree without CLOTs being hosted here, they will die. There will be a lack of viability unless you are constantly recruiting players. And since there are no achievements for them like other ladders, that will keep other people from joining them.

The lack of support is the big thing for me. I had mine up and running, but I had lots I wanted to do in it. With a resource pool of 3 people (that Qi mentioned), that isn't a lot. Especially when one is coding a different language (ps) and perhaps none have done what you actually are trying to do anyway. Without Fizzer or some other expert (I know other people helped him write the CLOT system), you are sunk. It takes 10 times longer to figure things out and if the thing is going to lose interest anyway...like Qi said why bother?

I want to finish my CLOT, but not if it will just die.

maybe there can be a "CLOTS" section in "Ladders" in the dashboard? would that solve anything?

I think you failed to realize that Fizzer said the best way to enact change is to show him a better way in actual effect. Clot's as an example for a better ladder, not clots to replace official ladders which quite rightly it never would eclipse.

Can you prevent gaming the system with a Clot? Can you improve on the ranking system with one? Maybe if so, fizzer would look to using that system for the future ladders?

I think my point is that the current ladders are Fizzer's CLOTS, and there can be a section within that section to easily access others' CLOTS.

Discord is right. It has not been shown better another way. But, he is also asking us to develop a better way with no promise of visibility on the site for the CLOT. So we could put tons of effort in and have it die because there is no exposure, achievements, etc.

Okay, yes, what I'm asking is if there is more visibility/exposure for the CLOT's, does that solve the problem? I don't think we'd have to worry about a good CLOT not gaining enough "stature," as plenty of player-made tourney's have become WL staples. Not only that, but someone said ps's CLOT had 50 entries, and it would be even more now.

Fizzer: as an added bonus, could there be a way for CLOT programmers to be able to assign an achievement for those who reach #1? Maybe not gold, but not silver either.

I think giving lots of visibility for CLOT ladders is a fair thing to ask in exchange for a player developing the ladder. Showing CLOT's beside official ladders on community frontpage would be a good thing. There should be some guarantee that efforts of the community will not be in vain.

So, what kind of visibility would a CLOT ladder exactly get?

I propose it starts in A, and if it gets popular enough it gets promoted to B:

A:


B:

myhand: "Qi killed the Greece CLOT." You are wrong for two reasons: (1) I changed a map and sent it to Fizzer; Fizzer understands better than anyone how that would affect a template or a CLOT. He published it. I did not publish the map. If I give you a gun (for any purpose) and you shoot somebody, did I shoot somebody? Your logic assumes I am the killer and the person who pulled the trigger is not. (2) Before the CLOT stopped working for a day or two, its participation had already declined. PS got it running again. If it was as popular for others as it was for you, a one-day stoppage would not have mattered much. The Greece CLOT started once and became successful for a short time. Why couldn't it start again and regain that success? The answer to this question is where reality and erroneous assumptions diverge.

Slammy, that looks nice. So, somebody programs a new CLOT. It goes on the website somewhere for greater visibility. Participation rates increase. It's a success! Right? Wrong. There are two parts to having a successful CLOT in the long term: (1) the programming/visibility/participation rates side of it and (2) the personal side. CLOTs require a programmer not named Fizzer to work as hard and be as dedicated to maintaining, monitoring, fixing, de-bugging the CLOT as Fizzer is with WL. A CLOT is a mini-WL. Tell me, how many programmers do you know will work on a long-term project (for longer than a year) that (a) belongs to someone else, (b) is dependent on someone else's company to remain in operation, (c) takes up free time (less time for school, work, friends/family, romance, leisure), (d) provides absolutely no monetary reward, and (e) changes your WL experience from playing and chatting in a leisurely manner to having less time for playing and you spend most or all of your time messing around with the CLOT?

I seriously doubt that any functional CLOT will last longer than six months and maintain high participation rates. Either the programmer will experience burn out and grow tired of spending so much time on a project without getting paid and/or the lack of integration, support from Fizzer, and visibility will nip the CLOT in the bud before the programmer burns out.

CLOTs are fool's gold. Three intelligent programmers tried and eventually killed their own CLOTs because the costs were greater than the benefits to them. The only CLOT that will work is a Fizzer CLOT -- and Fizzer CLOTs are called ladders. Maybe someone can start a CLOT. But Fizzer would have to be a co-manager or take it over himself, and he seems reluctant to do that. Without Fizzer, all CLOTs are doomed to failure.

But carry on with this quixotic CLOT adventure. Your naivete is amusing.

Edited 6/18/2014 01:52:33

Can you prevent gaming the system with a Clot? Can you improve on the ranking system with one?

You may be able to prove this through pure math. Recalculate a seasonal ladder, for instance.

I hope my naivete is more amusing than your whining.

I'd be interested in hearing about how much upkeep, etc there is from ps and the other clot programmers. I can imagine some teaming up, like in the AI wars. It can't be too hard.

I'm also looking for Fizzer to respond to my proposal. It seems like a good wiki-ish compromise.

Fizzer?

I heard of the 3v3 europe and 1v1 RT greece ladders. I think those were both PS. IF 2 other people have tried making clots and i (forum regular) didnt hear about them, then their failure was not really fizzers fault.

Fizz said he would provide some promotion, and judging by how much detail the wiki goes into, he really wants people to make clots. Once youve made one clot i dont see how much upkeep it could require. i would be happy to keep improving it for 6 months, after that id reasses. I dont think another ladder could 'dwarf' the current 1v1 ladder, so a replacement will probably never happen. maybe we will have a situation where only forum regulars and pros play my adjusted 1v1 ladder and that will be fine. juding by how few top players play strat 1v1 anymore perhaps there isnt a market for a 1v1 ladder for intelligent people. ps real time ladder surely paved the way for the current rt ladder. at the very least a small community of top players can use my clot to hash out a better ladder system, show it to fizzer and he can take whatever he wants from it for the main 1v1 ladder. fizz has a history of stubbornly doing what he fancies, which is fine with me. if the 1v1 ladder is to change this seems like the most likely route to success.

Edited 6/18/2014 03:12:23

Kzy's ladder was permanently displayed on the Dashboard until it broke. I still don't know why it broke, and he ignores me when I ask him about it.

Maintaining a CLOT shouldn't be much work beyond the initial investment, if it's done right. The only upkeep would be:

- If it's a rotating template thing, you have to keep picking new templates (obviously).
- If you change your WarLight password, you have to re-enter your API key into the CLOT. If you never change your password then you don't need to worry about this.
- Fixing any bugs that you miss in the initial development. Things can come up that might not have tested initially, such as handling games that were ended by vote, or that someone declined. The amount of work spent here should diminish over time since you'll eventually run into every corner case and handle it correctly and then you're done.
- Basic hosting problems, like hard drives filling up. Occasionally you have to clear out or archive old data to ensure your hard drive doesn't run out of space. Unless the CLOT is super popular it would probably take years before any action was needed here.

The nice thing about Google App Engine is you don't need to worry about hardware failure or backups or anything like that. I also expect it would be free for most CLOTs, since they should easily fall under GAE's free quota.

The issue that happened with the Greece CLOT has since been fixed on WarLight's side. Back then it wasn't possible to create games on old versions of maps, so when the new version was made public the CLOT broke until it was changed to point at the new version. Today, it would just continue humming along on the old version and the CLOT author could choose to stay there or upgrade to the new version of the map for new games.

If a CLOT proved stable and popular enough for a while, I'd be okay with putting it into the tabs on the dashboard or the Ladders page. Potentially also adding achievements/points for it, although I'd want it to run for a long while first to ensure its integrity.

Even if a CLOT isn't popular, it can still be useful for proving how a different rating or matchmaking system can work. Even if there's only a few dozen players, we can still challenge someone to try and game it to see if they're successful or not.

In general, one of the problems with designing ladder systems is that pretty much everything can be gamed. I disagree with Sze when he says the RT ladder can't be gamed -- it can. Nevertheless, I'm open to making targeted changes, and I like some of the ideas I've read. However, they will happen slowly and methodically, as I don't want to make any rush changes without thinking it through completely, and it has to compete for my time which is already 100% booked on my current projects.

Sze when he says the RT ladder can't be gamed -- it can.

How? Games never expire, template seems to be completely random (you can't wait some point for join to be sure to take a certain template), ELO rating is very fair, i think is a great improvement the fact rating doesn't adjust when opponent's rating change.

For krzychu CLOT, if i remember right, he stopped bc he was lack of time, plus he had some various problem in creating games: sometimes CLOT stopped to create games, and he wasn't ablt to avoid same players have more than 1 match (i remember some player say they play each other 2 or more times)

Edited 6/18/2014 08:48:08

Signing in with your friends accounts and throwing games? sounds like something youd do.

slammy - only 5 mana and you're no longer bothered:



Edited 6/18/2014 10:04:17

Thanks for the input Fizzer. I agree the upkeep is minimal, not sure what happened on Krzychu's but i suspect he was trying to improve it.

Like i said the big thing for me is i have no clue how to get rating system in mine despite lots of reading on internet