Topic: Ladder League site: What would you like to see?

[toasty0]

What would you like to see in a ladder league.

Should it be race based?

Should it be era based?

Bring it on folks. Post your ideas while we're still testing development tools and strategies.

Let your friends know too...

Jerry

[KHH Jakle]

*The following is independent commentary based on my experience running a league for over a year.  I am largely retired from gaming - I am not longer stumping for anthing or anybody*

It is doubtful the remaining player base would support an active and full fledged League.

Keep in mind that, technically, you all have a 'League' running out of these forums.  Go check the Patrol Battles Arena in the Orion Pirates forum.   

Some components to that league that I think the participants find universally attractive:

Race Based
Team games (no 1v1's, or 2v2's for that matter)
Scheduled Matches - that's the clincher.  Now, I haven't been in GSA for months now, but I would be surprised if OP get's even 30-40 people in it on a peak night.  Even if it does, of those, only maybe 8-10 of those are actually looking for games.  With sheduled matches, you agree when to show - and I think usually it works out well.  Hell of a lot better than hanging around for several hours waiting for someone to show up to play with so you can report that one ladder match

Other things -
In my opinion ladders stink.  GZ came up with what I think is the best competetive framework for SFC, that being a divisional league.  League champion is not determined by what fleet could gather the biggest roster and push through the largest volume of games - it's the team that can meet it's opponents on an 'equal' footing and win those games. 

The format the D2.net PBR League uses is essentially the same as what GZ used: All teams are sepeated into two conferences.  The cycle consists of a set number of matches.    Each Match is 3 games - two out of three wins the Match.  Wins and losses for each fleet are recorded and posted.  At the close of the cycle, the final tally of win/losses determines who progresses to a playoff round, and then ultimately to the Championship bout.

That's the basic framework

Some particulars that are also in effect:
All games are 3v3 matches.  If one team shows with only 2 players, one of them gets an AI

The Schedule is broken down into weeks, with each fleet playing one match per week (in theory - there is alot of flex here). 

The terms for each game of each match is determined before the season even starts.  That was one of the biggest pluses for this format - no more friggin negotiations. 

A total BPV is used to buy all 3 ships and extras.  This is generated randomly, although the parameters are set and largely accepted by all teams (Late era games can be as low as 300 and as high as 700 or 800)

Era is randomly determined - although there should be a fairly even distribution, and no single match should be all one era games.  Rather, they should be representative of all of them (with overlap between Late and Advanced)

Terrain is randomly determined.

Again, all this is set in stone before the season starts, before the schedule is built to say that maybe a Fed fleet is playing versus a Rom in week one.  It's a base, level playing field.  Here are the terms of battle - go pick 'em and fight.

All of the above is managed in a thread in a forum, with individual fleet scheduling happening in independant threads.  If you are going to build a website around it or some ladder, keep in INCREDIBLY simple.  Nihm, god love him, built a fabulous site for GZ - but all we ever heard from just about everybody was how hard it was to navigate.   I didn't have a problem with it - but I was in it all the time.  If the lay user is bewildered, and needs repeated instruction on how to do things, then you probably need to simplify things.

Well, there you go...

[GDA-Kel]

I would agree with Jakle on all of the above.  Especially the playerbase.  We have 8 race-based fleets now, soon to be 7.  Plus some of those fleets have a hard time scraping up 3 pilots to fly together for a given match. 

[EmeraldEdge]

Jakle sure lays out some good points.

As far as terrain, if you are doing rounds, I might say it goes the same for everyone in a round?

Round 1 - Open space
Round 2 - Black Hole
Round 3 - Planets with Sun
Round 4 - Asteroids
Round 5 - Open Space (for the championship)

That way by the time you've made it to the top you've had to fight in all the various terrain, and nobody has an advatage by getting great terrain throughout by random chance.  I would personally put Nebula in there too (but a lot of folks might cry about how much of an advantage it gives to the plasma chucker), although if you know you are going to be fighting in a nebula, you can certainly choose a ship that works better.

That also brings up potential for a different ladder to the standard one.  The fixed team, where you choose your ships at the beginning of the competition and have to take them through all of the terrain battles.  No custom choosing your ships for each environment.  Just a thought.

[FPF-Tobin Dax]

Without hundreds of players, there's no point for a ladder league.

[EmeraldEdge]

I don't know that I agree with that.  Heck, even if you only had 8 teams of 3 I think it might be fun.  It would make for very many rounds, but you could have a much quicker turn around rate on the competition.

[FPF-Tobin Dax]

I don't know that I agree with that.  Heck, even if you only had 8 teams of 3 I think it might be fun.  It would make for very many rounds, but you could have a much quicker turn around rate on the competition.

What ladder league has been versus what PBR is right now. A divisional league with 1 game per week.  Ladder was sitting on GSA trying to line up a match. Without hundreds of committed players, I sure am not going to sit around hoping to get a match on GSA.

[Whoo]

Ladder can be what you make of it.

I will agree, unless you have a large player base, a standard ladder is not only going to be boring it's going to be rather un-eventful.

Going from experience, there are other options you can persue code wise to accomodate a smaller player base, however most ladders by description will serve to the most active player, such as SL was and GZ was for a long period of time.

IF you go to a pure ladder system (winner takes the spot of the loser if the loser is on a higher rung) you can have some fun, and a large base isnt required since its KOTH style.

IF you can arrange a schedule type of system that people can agree to, (PBR was a good example) you could pull it off.

Either way good luck with it, and let me know if you have any questions, I can certainly tell you what not to do

[toasty0]

Thanks for all your feedback everyone. I will print this out and think about what all of you have said as I develop the software/site.

A general FYI: I have moved the beta test over to my test server: http://www.toasty0.net. This is where I will develop the software. Anyone interested in how things go just pop on by, give it a whirl and let me know if you like it, don't like it, or something on your wish list that's not there.

Jerry

[Slider]

I think a Rung based system would work as it lends itself to what people are used to in other games and you can have 1 v 1, 2 v 2 flavors. Races can be Open, Pure or even Mixed based on players. Choices abound.

Another old idea is the use of a Dyna to hold a battle. You have all sides (say 20 players, 10 on a side) go in at a give time, Ships handed based on name via the MySql server. As you lose your ships, your given a garbage barge and have to head back to your base. Team with the last man standing wins. Theoretically this should take several hours, more than a standard 3 v 3 but less than a full blown Dyna.

Slider