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

How rt ladder can be gamed:

1. Seek out opponents whose rating is higher than usual. They're probably overreated. Only current rating matters because ratings will not be corrected later. Avoid players that have an unusually low rating.

Example: Some player always checks who's playing the real-time ladder, and only joins when the opponents have at least 100 points more rating than their last 2 months average is.

2. Join the ladder when the overall skill is low while there is a large number of participants. For the same skill, you will get a higher rating.

Example: Some player joins the rt ladder that is currently only being played by Hidden Hand. They play 10 games, player wins all of them and gets a rating as high as possible.

Now the same player joins the ladder that is only being played by sze. They play 10 ganes, player loses all of them and gets the lowest possible rating.

In both scenarios, player had the same skills but his rating got very different.

3. Multiaccounting. This cannot really be solved by a rating system. Monitoring IP's and banning anonymizing services is the way to go.

Just an idea: You guys could ask some of the more successful programmers in the Warlight AI Challenge to help out with the programming.

About the CLOTs:

I actually did 3 afaicr: one greece realtime, one 3vs3 europe multiday, and one rotational template multiday. the most successful was greece, and i believe that was mostly due to being realtime, i like to think this influenced somehow fizzer's decision to create the official realtime ladder but i guess only he can speak for that.

don't know about the others but mine required daily maintenance, mostly because i didn't bother doing the refactoring that would enable them to run on their own, and that is doable. But at the time i was more interested in getting things working, not thinking on maintainability, and then i ran out of free time to focus on it and then it eventually never got restarted. If i would ever restart it i would need to do that refactoring to make it more automate. If anyone is fluent with php and/or javascript and wants to pick it up, it's all open source, go right ahead: https://github.com/psenough/wl_clot i can even offer you free hosting to run it on if that's a problem for you.

i think the europe 3vs3 was also successful enough to warrant an official ladder under those settings, i don't get why Fizzer isn't seriously considering it as an official ladder, but i guess he has his reasons to doubt it working as a long term thing.

Other than that, i agree i would rather have the realtime ladder more accessible for quick games (as i already mentioned to Fizzer a few times) and that the alts on the ladder is lame and should be banned. Also wouldn't mind seeing the stalling behavior take a hit.

But i don't share Gui's concept of boycotting to solve anything, i just see it as putting more stress and pressure on Fizzer, which makes working on warlight a bigger chore for him than it already is. Yet Gui is right in his main point, Fizzer should be more responsive to it's powerusers, or atleast delegate some of it's functionalities so he doesn't need to be on top of those issues. And give priority to the higher voted uservoice tickets, otherwise what's the point of having an uservoice?

I'd like to resurrect the europe 3v3, but I only really know Python. I took one class in Java and that is it. I will try learning it again sometime soon, but would be lost probably.

I had started on a CLOT before, and it had zero maintenance, ran fine. My issue was it was still operating on W-L and not a rating, which is why it was never public. I invited clan mates and we tested it at times, but if I got help getting a rating system in place I could easily get the CLOTs going.

I do remember I had some other features I wanted to get in it though (like dealing with inactive people/boots) and some other enhancements I had ideas for...but I think I could figure those all out in time. Guess I will just get working on all that and I can always put rating system in later.

Edited 6/19/2014 15:23:14

problems

good or professional players: most of good players only think theirselves. what about new and average players? how many warlight players use graphics? how many players know straight round, 0 luck etc.? how many players want to play 7 or 10 templates? please think about other players too. i agree with fizzer. if you want your world, go and create your warlight world. and Fizzer says that he will help you about this. if i were him i wouldnt help. he doesnt have to show your CLOTs or ladders at main page. forum page is enough to advertise it. if you like a template if you made a map, go and play it. nobody has to play or like it. you paid for membership for creating tournaments, creating low luck games and playig ladders etc. i never saw that fizzer said if you have membership i will listen you and change warlight how you want.

alts: i blame Fizzer at this point. 3 years ago when i joined warlight it was better. i really miss old days. before, we were meeting with new players in every game, now we are asking "what is your main account?" there are too many alts Fizzer and they join ladders, membership tournaments, and they kill nice tournaments. i call them schizophrenic players. this is just a suggestion Fizzer. of course this is your game. i said this because it was written by you http://wiki.warlight.net/index.php/Rules. 3rd rule: "You shall not operate more than one WarLight account in a way that gives you an advantage in a game, tournament or ladder". maybe you forgot 3rd rule.
if we really wanna boycott something it should be alts. ironically ladder boycotters have most alts. they are killing system and they say fizzer to change ladder.

1v1 ladder: 1v1 ladder template and system is a classic. we are using most known map and template. and this is very good for new players to understand their levels. firstly alts should be banned. secondly number of games and expiration time should be changed. i wrote it before and i want to mention it again. finishing 15 games were not problem before because there was not 300 players at ladder. my suggestion; we need a dynamic system for this problem. for example; for being ranked, player should finish (number of players in ladder)/10. if you dont do this, can you imagine what will happen if we have 10.000 players in ladder? will 15 games be enough? expiration time should be dynamic also. my suggestion;(number of players)/2,5. of course when we will have 10.000 players at ladder nobody will try to finish 1000 games. solution is simple. 1v1 ladder A division, 1v1 ladder B division? every division 300 or 500 players.

i will continue to write about other ladders and problems. sorry for my bad english.

Edited 6/20/2014 00:52:28

I agree what you have to say about new and avg players Ottoman. The current ladder 1v1 is a great template for newer players and I think most would be satisfied to achieve a 1500+ rating. I for one really did enjoy playing in the lower brackets when I first started because of its ease of access and ubiquitous understanding.

I also have to say I really like what Fizzer is doing to support the warlight community by allowing us to create our own ladder. If we could create one that is as successful as the current ladders he may even adopt it. Player experience is his priority he really does care about how everyone enjoys the game not just the top players.

The ball truly is in our court so to speak and we should seize the moment and act on it.

I think the games finished is spot on as far as the 1v1 ladder is concerned. 15 is simply not enough to prevent stalling. It might be difficult to code a dynamic number but I do like the idea of creating divisions. Every new player could start in the bottom division and the top ten ranked players in the lower divisions get promoted a week after achieving their top ten to the next division. I seriously think this would also increase the activity on the ladders as well. Since some players have no hope of even reaching the top 100 let alone the top ten. By creating division people can have realistically achievable goals. and lets be honest there are probably 20 players that could truly compete for a #1 spot in a non gamed ladder. The number of skilled players has increased a lot from the old days and warlight has become significantly more competitive(perhaps this adds to the use of alts to game the ladders) It really is like throwing lambs to the wolves when newer players join the ladder.



*on the subject of alts*

_________________________________________________________________
I am not to sure you can ban alts in the first place. As people simply create legit emails and continue creating alts not to mention you can use an IP scrambler to prevent banning additional accounts via IP.

Unfortunately alts are abused I think an alt account can bring flair and fun to the community but to many individuals are using alts to game the ladders this is both sad and unfortunate. I like shtick comedy and enjoy the occasional alt.

As long as people are not gaming the system or cheat with an alt I don't think there is a huge problem. I mean look at the clan Maximus Trollotis that Pulsey and Pulsius the Great started it is actually a pretty fun little clan that hasn't impinged upon the game and is basically a clan of alts. Hmmm perhaps all alts should join the alt clan so people basically know whats up?


_______________________________________________________________

Edited 6/20/2014 03:35:02

Why not just show what the main/alts are in every profile so everyone knows? Then implement a setting option for anonymous games

Err, Pulsey is why the ladder is being gamed to the extent it is right now, to use his clan of example of harmless alts seems a bit silly.

I'm not saying alts can't be harmless, they obviously can, I just think you listed very bad examples since they both grabbed rank 1 on ladder by stalling their ass off on those alts.

On the other hand I'd label this account as harmless, I made it because I was curious what % of autogames I could win if I played nothing but them. So far this accounts run leads me to suspect that % is 95 or higher since I've went on a 20+ game winstreak to start the account.

Yes they stalled to game the ladder. However, as others have mentioned this is just their way of boy-cotting the system. Plus everyone knows who Pulsey is its not exactly an alt per say as it does not hide the identity of his main as his main is Pulsey now Jehovah. Pulsey purposefully set out to show how easy it is to game the sytem in the hopes that it would be corrected.

I really don't think Pulsey had anywhere near that noble of a cause. He's always been a staller, and desperately wanted to one-up JSA seems a more accurate analysis.