@ Hennns and DanWL

one reason tournaments stall out is because people don't decline and you can't invite more people

You're talking about private tournaments. Open tournaments do not have this problem -- anyone can always join it, regardless of whether they've been invited

Now that I understand private tournaments wouldn't be affected, then just make it completely coin-based to do an open tournament. That's completely fine with me.

I'll throw a number out there. I support a 40 player limit for most tournaments.

It allows for an 8 team 5v5 double/single elimination, a 16 team 2v2 double/single elimination, a 32 player single elimination tournament with 5 rounds, or a 20 team 2v2 round robin. At that size, they fill up fairly fast, are decently big, and usually (although not always) finish within 3 months.

For those with bigger tastes in tournaments, have a couple of larger featured tournaments or make them pay/Member only to create.


When I am looking for a tournament to join, I like to know up front:
1. How many teams/rounds/players per team and number of players the tournament is waiting for.
2. Map (including number of territories)
3. Boot time (I prefer shorter)
4. Tournament type (round robin, single elim, double elim) and number of games at once.

P.S. I also like the idea of a standby list.

Edited 2/10/2015 19:47:46

A lot of the suggestions in this thread make the system more complex. Like laws, we should try for elegant solutions, not complex ones. Some simple filters, deleting or hiding tournaments older than __ days, and an "open tourneys" tab would all go a long way towards fixing the problems without restricting tournament creation.

@HankyPinky
The issue with people not declining tournaments does in fact affect open tournaments as well. Because when you reach the cap on number of invited players (so that you can't send more invites) less players will know of the tourney and it will take longer to fill. (this mostly affect tourneys where "forward invites" is possible for everyone). That is the main reason an auto-decline would imo help solve the issue with the 200s of open tournaments.

I see my idea was ignored (a way to trim rounds). You could help get tournaments to the correct size as well if the number of rounds was an unlock. So you could maybe only create a 4 round tournament until you reach a certain level.

As far as the question on why make tournaments, there are many reasons...

1) to facilitate a league/competition of some sort (clan league, promotion league, etc). You could also make all games manually, but that is a huge pain to admin. The tourney does all the organization for you.

2) to play against different people. This is different from the competition admin part because you are allowing random people to join (so long as you allow invites and/or it is open).

3) promote map and or template (already mentioned). fantastic way to get exposure to a template and/or map.

4) chat. Sometimes this is best way to pool people together for a competition of some sort

5) recognition. it is nice to have that email to everyone that says you won it. individual games don't do that.

6) less clutter. people will decline tournaments and not be cluttered. If you decline a game, you still see the game on your list until it is completed (VERY annoying). You will rarely use the filter on tournament list to see ones you declined.

Edited 2/10/2015 20:20:33

The invite list thing is still an issue with not allowing invites. Even with the option to clean it up on profile, people still don't.

I think by default the open seats should not allow someone inactive for more than 30 days. If it needs to be changed it can, but %99 of the time you don't want those people allowed to be invited.

I quite like Hankys proposal. It solves the problem with grace.

I would remove a tournament from the open tournaments list after 3 months
the tournament will still exist but not in the open tournaments list
also any kind of filtering/sorting mechanism would be a great addition

also if you could delete this:
https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?TournamentID=6301
that would be great

Fizzer:
You're talking about private tournaments. Open tournaments do not have this problem -- anyone can always join it, regardless of whether they've been invited. The only reason tournaments reach the invite limit is due to abuse of the invite system -- people are just spamming everyone rather than actually inviting players who they want to play a tournament with. This leads to people ignoring tournament invites, which is the fundamental reason they're taking up a space in that tournament. We can talk about private tournaments more in a different thread, but let's keep this thread about open tournaments, as the subject says.


The abuse of the invite system is beacuse the invite system it's a mess. The friend list it's actually an "acquaintance list", and each time you met a player the list growths more, making it too time consuming to sort it. Make a real friend list (and clan list), and this problem should drop a bit.

1) to facilitate a league/competition of some sort (clan league, promotion league, etc). You could also make all games manually, but that is a huge pain to admin. The tourney does all the organization for you.

2) to play against different people. This is different from the competition admin part because you are allowing random people to join (so long as you allow invites and/or it is open).

3) promote map and or template (already mentioned). fantastic way to get exposure to a template and/or map.

4) chat. Sometimes this is best way to pool people together for a competition of some sort

5) recognition. it is nice to have that email to everyone that says you won it. individual games don't do that.

6) less clutter. people will decline tournaments and not be cluttered. If you decline a game, you still see the game on your list until it is completed (VERY annoying). You will rarely use the filter on tournament list to see ones you declined.

1. You can do this with a private tournament.

2. Aye

3. Aye

4. Again, done with private tournaments.

5. Aye

6. Hopefully they can fix this.

Just would like to remind everyone that the topic is about open tournaments, ones that allow anyone to join and show up on the open tournaments page. So basically what I'm getting at, if I understand correctly, leagues and any other private-type tournaments will be completely untouched by anything we discuss on this thread.

I posted this to Fizzer on skype because I wanted to remind myself to post this on the forums. I used to play a competitive game called Bloodline Champions, and in that game there were auto-tournaments every other day run by the game itself. Winners of these tournaments would get a special tournament currency that they could buy items or skins as a sort of trophy. I don't see why we couldn't do something like that on here. I thought it was inventive and a very enjoyable aspect of that game.

This "bad experience" of tournaments being deleted isn't important. If anything it would teach tournament creators to be more reasonable with what they create. People already experience this with the regular open games.

As Hennns said the issue with people not declining tournaments is still a problem with open tournaments. It only takes one person to invite their whole list and then your waiting for people to find you instead of being able to find players.

I don't know what level tournaments unlock but it should be at least 50.

Combine those ideas with mobile having access and that should solve the problem.

Making open tournaments have a coin fee would also solve the problem because it would kill the open tournament scene.

The issue with people not declining tournaments does in fact affect open tournaments as well. Because when you reach the cap on number of invited players (so that you can't send more invites) less players will know of the tourney and it will take longer to fill.

I'm thinking about completely disabling invites for open tournaments. Why does someone need to be invited when the tournament is open? It's open to everyone -- just join. Inviting is just over-complicating things.

In return, open tournaments would get a *lot* more promotion. They'd be listed directly on the Tournaments tab, and even maybe some limited exposure on the main multi-player page.

The goal is for all open tournaments to start quickly (within a day or two). Ideally, there should never be more than 10 open tournaments at any given time.

After that, the issue of invite spamming still needs to be addressed, but just for private tournaments. For starters, removing the "check all" button would help a lot. But then it would also need to be improved so you could easily invite the people you do want to invite, such as all clan members or all of your regular friends, etc. The UI for inviting/forwarding is really bad right now, as it doesn't even allow searching or filtering. This is going to be improved. The invite limit for tournaments will also likely be going up, as long as it can be done in a way that doesn't invoke more mass spamming.

Edited 2/10/2015 21:24:36

Tournaments do need to expire. Communication/options to save a tourney should also be present.

A significant issue with tournaments is that people join then months go by, the tourney finally starts, but in the interim, people have left WarLight and so their teammates get screwed.

I would suggest the following:
- Invitations expire one week after being sent
- Invitations cannot be sent to inactive players
(no active games in the past week && > 1w inactivity)
- After accepting an invite, if a player goes inactive,
he's removed from the tourney attendees
- Every month a player needs to confirm their desire to
attend the tourney - failure to do so (within a week)
is an auto-decline
- If a tourney has declined (or failed to improve) in
accepted members over a month, the tourney owner is
asked whether he wishes to cancel the tourney
- If a tourney owner is asked three consecutive months
and attendance has not gone up, the tourney is
cancelled.

I'm thinking about completely disabling invites for open tournaments. Why does someone need to be invited when the tournament is open? It's open to everyone -- just join. Inviting is just over-complicating things.

Open tournament don't fill unless you invite a load of people. It's the only option. An open tournament will take forever to fill if you don't invite anyone with the current state on the open tournaments page. Please don't do this until the problem with the current open tournaments page is fixed.

Edited 2/10/2015 22:14:45

"The goal is for all open tournaments to start quickly (within a day or two). Ideally, there should never be more than 10 open tournaments at any given time."

I can see that happen with small tournaments, but not with the large ones (250+). Especially the 1000 player ones-> Maybe a good idea to lower the max number of players? Most don't fill in a year anyway.

"it would also need to be improved so you could easily invite the people you do want to invite, such as all clan members or all of your regular friends, etc."
If you are going to make it so you can invite can members, why not make it so you can invite any clan (including your own), that would be so much easier (also for non-clan players). (Of course that might only be relevant for private tourneys, if you remove invites for the open ones).

Additionally I'm happy you're going to work on this; pretty much no matter what you do in the end it'll be a huge improvement :)

Ok, I have an idea. How about you take the 176 oldest, and most unfilled Tournaments and delete them, and re restrict tournaments to members, I think I get an invite to a tournament about 50 times a week, maybe I join one.

In the interface, players are presented with the option to create a 9 bracket (512 player) tournament. While most of us realize that a tournament that size is probably unrealistic, it can bias people into thinking that 64 players is a small tournament, which it really isn't. Even if nobody picks those high numbers, just having them there influences the size of new tournaments being created. I think the 8 (256 players) and 9 (512 players) bracket options should be removed, especially for double elimination.

Edited 2/11/2015 01:04:28

EDITED to look cleaner

I say,
Non-Members can have one active (started tournaments don't count) OPEN tourney, with a cap of 32 for Single elimination, 16 for double, and 10 for RR. (I have never needed to create any bigger, anyway)

Members, can have 3 active tourneys, cap of 256 for SE, 128 for DE and 20 (same as now) for RR.

512 players tournaments could be organized by Warzone, with a reward. (Makes them exclusive)

My point is that it takes to loooooong for a tournament to finish (not to mention start), thus the size of the tournument, is just as big, if not a bigger, issue then the waiting for the tournument to start.


NEW IDEA! Mapmakers (possible only thous who have the achievement for great map.) may host a tournament for their own map at any given time. (I feel confident they will use good templates, that work well with their maps)

NEW IDEA! Reduce Max boot time for multi-day tournaments, to something lime a MAX of 5 days (30 days, is pointless. May make one player happy, but the rest is annoyed )

NEW IDEA! Also consider to have all tournaments be NO VACATION.
((I would change the whole vac. system to Max of 5 days, and 10 times a year. OR max 7 and 7 times a year. Current is Max 10 , five times))

I hope to have smaller tournaments that starts and FINISHES within 3 weeks. (As a player I will win 1 of 512 tournaments if they all have this (512) size, aka I will never win. Smaller tournaments makes more players win more often, which = more fun = happy players = more players playing tournaments)


Also, as for why I play tournaments?

1. I can have games with "fun" settings created with players that become "better" as the tournament progresses. (Obviously not RR)
2. There is an Ultimate Goal (win tournament), that makes games more impotent then normal open games.
3. RR is great for team matches.
4. Not really important to me, but tournaments Do give extra points.

Edited 2/11/2015 01:21:43