Author Topic: Dedicated Annual (Or something) RA2 League [Inactive] (Read 8902 times)

kill343gs · « **on:** November 14, 2015, 06:59:39 PM »

Those of you that have the displeasure of having me in your skype chats know that I've been grumbling for a while about how to wake gametechmods back up into the thriving virtual robot combat hub that it could be. I believe that the only way for this to happen is to give ra2 a purpose. A reason for people to want to play it. We need some effin competition.

I propose that we organize and run a dedicated RA2 league. The problem is, there's a load of different elements that go into this, and every little detail makes it more complicated. My vision is a team based league structure similar to various competitive sports, with weekly matchups. I want this to be just as interesting for the competitors as the viewers. I know that I haven't watched a tournament match that I wasn't involved in in a very long time. Narrowing everything down to a group of teams makes things easier to follow. Spectators could show their support of their favorite teams in their signatures and whatnot. I'm dreaming here, and I get that, but I really think it's worth a shot before we slowly dwindle into nothingness.

There's a lot of stuff here. This was my original proposal.

The majority of the ideas I have here are up in the air. I just want to get a feel for what everybody's interests are. This would take a lot of commitment from a lot of people. We would need multiple hosts willing to record matches on a weekly basis. Each team would need to have at least one member who can AI.

Ideas that specifically need input:
1. Length of the championship year. What I mean by this, is do we really think that year long system is sustainable, or would people lose interest? How can we shorten it?
2. Divisions. The few people that were around when I started babbling about this expressed concern that my proposal was only for stock. They felt that Ironforge and DSL should also get some form of representation.
3. The Draft. Half of me really wants people to be able to make a team of 3 or 4 with a couple of their friends, which would be pretty baller. But at the same time, does this allow for the creation of super-teams, and is that really a problem if so? The New York Yankees exist. Bayern Munich exists. They both have huge fanbases. The draft is the solution to all this, but what do people prefer?

I'll think of some more and add it to the OP once we get the ball rolling on this conversation.

EDIT:
This is what we are currently proposing based on discussion so far.
This league will be draft format.
Bots will be proposed at the start of the league season. In between weeks, you will be allowed small tweaks to your bot so that it improves over time.
This will take place in Ironforge TC. Ironforge is uncharted territory for a lot of people. That helps to even the playing field. In addition, ironforge was created to be exciting to watch, with bots flying all over the place and plenty of destruction. This of course means that we will likely be following standard DSL IRL rules. No stacking, limited glitches, components cannot intersect components completely. etc. If it isn't technically possible in real life, it isn't going to fly here.

Some things that need discussion:
Livestreams. We want to livestream the matches the night before they are released in recorded form.
Commentary. We want a commentary team. Is it worth it?
Weapon restrictions. Ironforge is destructive as all hell (so I'm told.) To prevent weapon spam, in addition to the IRL rules, we are considering limiting components from the weapons tab by weight class. Something along the lines of 5 weapons for LW, 7 for MW, 10 for HW. Those of you with IF experience, how does that sound?

cephalopod · « **Reply #1 on:** November 15, 2015, 07:27:09 AM »

Compress it into a 6 month schedule? Assuming a month is ~4 weeks, therefore 6 months is 24 weeks...

Weeks 1-2 - Preparations
Weeks 3-6 - LW Season
Weeks 7-8 - Break
Weeks 9-12 - MW Season
Weeks 13-14 - Break
Weeks 15-18 - HW Season
Weeks 19-24 - Off-season (room for other weightclasses or IRL mini-seasons?)

Or if you wanted a true half year you could add another 2 weeks onto the off-season to get 2 full rotations a year.
Also I'd like to see all main mods run simultaneously, I don't build Stock at all and I'm 0% interested in getting good at it (sorry AS) so it'd be nice to see at least Ironforge included (DSL is a difficult one with the massive endgame it has reached in Standard building).
Team-wise, shuffling would probably make sense, but may mean some people just don't do anything because they don't want to/don't care. If it's friend based, people will get shouty at each other so they don't drop out. Maybe.

yugitom · « **Reply #2 on:** November 15, 2015, 09:17:03 AM »

Quote from: kill343gs on November 14, 2015, 06:59:39 PM

We would need multiple hosts willing to record matches on a weekly basis.

If this becomes a thing, I'll volunteer to be one of the hosts. My forte doesn't really lie in bot building, rather AI'ing and hosting matches, so I'd like to be part of this community league in at least some form.

Sage · « **Reply #3 on:** November 15, 2015, 09:17:48 AM »

Community isn't large enough to have all the main mods run at the same time, and doing so would completely defeat the purpose of "focusing" that Kill is trying to achieve.

I'm not sure what the metagame is for Ironforge, but stock is completely 100% dead at this point. If you look at the front page of the stock showcase, 90% of the latest comments on every thread are from me, trying to keep them going.

For this to work, we need everyone to agree on one mod that is almost objectively the best for an innovative competitive environment, and then push all of our focus there. Maybe a few people can take Ironforge, turn it into something new, and everyone starts the league with 0% experience.

Otherwise I can't see this being popular or maintaining commitment.

cephalopod · « **Reply #4 on:** November 15, 2015, 09:21:13 AM »

Ironforge doesn't really have a meta because there's probably been a maximum of 2 or 3 competitive tournaments in it.

Sage · « **Reply #5 on:** November 15, 2015, 09:26:40 AM »

Quote from: Craaig on November 15, 2015, 09:21:13 AM

Ironforge doesn't really have a meta because there's probably been a maximum of 2 or 3 competitive tournaments in it.

Perfect. Clean it up and lets use that.

yugitom · « **Reply #6 on:** November 15, 2015, 09:26:56 AM »

Quote from: Sage on November 15, 2015, 09:17:48 AM

For this to work, we need everyone to agree on one mod that is almost objectively the best for an innovative competitive environment, and then push all of our focus there.

Ironforge would be brilliant for this. As Craaig said, there isn't really an established meta.

Badnik96 · « **Reply #7 on:** November 15, 2015, 09:36:33 AM »

I'd be up for Ironforge.

Mystic2000 · « **Reply #8 on:** November 15, 2015, 09:37:25 AM »

Ironforge all the way

Lemonism · « **Reply #9 on:** November 15, 2015, 11:17:47 AM »

I've been feeling burnt out when it comes to gtm recently, but this is something that would recapture my interest.
I'd also put my support behind Ironforge.
I probably couldn't help out with much, but I could make pretty logos

kill343gs · « **Reply #10 on:** November 15, 2015, 09:28:28 PM »

I've never touched ironforge and honestly this would make me interested.

090901 · « **Reply #11 on:** November 15, 2015, 10:12:37 PM »

D R A F T
R
A
F
T

MassimoV · « **Reply #12 on:** November 15, 2015, 10:54:53 PM »

Seems like a dope idea. I friggin love fantasy sports so this would seem to follow that kind of structure. I'd be down for something like this if all the deals get worked out and there's plenty of interest.

Scorpion · « **Reply #13 on:** November 15, 2015, 11:25:56 PM »

Seems like a great idea, especially if the focus is kept on one mod at least to start with.

kill343gs · « **Reply #14 on:** November 16, 2015, 09:06:11 AM »

What does everyone else think of the draft vs team of friends issue? Keep in mind that if we do a draft, there is a solid chance that some people might be left out. If enough people are left out, they could be assembled into a free agent team or something, but some people not getting to participate is a real possibility.

Also, how do we feel about bot submissions? We have a few options here.

1. We could have each member declare their bots at the start of the league year. Like a regular tournament, what you submit is what gets used the whole time. The strategy week to week is which bot gets selected for each match from each team.

2. Primary bot must be declared at the start of the tournament. This bot is used for week 1. Each subsequent week the bot can be redesigned, but it must stay true to the original design. This allows growth of players throughout the course of the tournament. Alternatively, we could allow a set amount of redesigns per player OR per team for each weight class. Like if the league is 8 weeks, allow 2 redesigns per user for the season or 4 redesigns per weight class for the team.

3. New bot is allowed every week. Unpredictability could be pretty awesome. Gives viewers a better idea of the scope of all around building ability of team members. Problem here is that halfway into the season, if one bot type is dominating then everybody would change to that bot type.

4. Each week is a different bot type challenge. Week 1 is VS/Drum, week 2 is pokers, etc etc. All around building ability, more directly competitive, and a chance to let every team showcase potential specialties. However, some matches could be boring wedgefests. This sounded a lot better in my head until I started writing it out.

Sage · « **Reply #15 on:** November 16, 2015, 10:21:28 AM »

Combine 1 and 2. Make 3 bots each team, and can marginally improve them every week.

Thrackerzod · « **Reply #16 on:** November 16, 2015, 10:44:21 AM »

I'm sorry, could someone explain how this draft thing would work?

This definitely seems like something I'd be interested in, though.

Badnik96 · « **Reply #17 on:** November 16, 2015, 10:49:50 AM »

2 sounds like a good idea to me.

kill343gs · « **Reply #18 on:** November 16, 2015, 11:11:23 AM »

Quote from: Thrackerzod on November 16, 2015, 10:44:21 AM

I'm sorry, could someone explain how this draft thing would work?

This definitely seems like something I'd be interested in, though.

Before the first league year would start, a user pool would be created. X Amount of captains would be decided based on the amount in that pool. Captains would submit their draft picks on skype or some other IM program in a snake draft format, with the order randomly decided. The users selected are placed on the teams they are chosen to.

The Red Blur · « **Reply #19 on:** November 16, 2015, 11:14:28 AM »

2 sounds great! Id be willing to participate, as well. This sounds really good. Oh, we'd also need a guy with a decent mic to announce. Someone with ridiculous amounts of enthusiasm, like the one out of robot wars.