Hi All
1st Post here
I had actually posted a thread on Auto Tournaments elsewhere. Very much looking to see if I can help any and/or get other ideas on how to improve them.
I had really high hopes when I heard of them, but I discovered there was quite a few limitations to them. However, they are the future, so it would be great to have an input on shaping the future.
Here was the limitations I found, and PROPOSED changes. I am of course very aware that every change is a commercial decision. However, there is 1 improvement which I can see which offers a massive improvement on capability. Anyway, for what it's worth:
1. ALL GAMES in a Round must complete before the next games can start.
This means Leagues are practically impossible. EVERY Player in every League is restricted to play at the speed of the SLOWEST Player in the Tournament. Imagine 200 players playing at the speed of the slowest player? - You get the picture.
To put a scale to the problem,
To make it clear, If I polled the Super League and said, do you want a scheduled start time where a Round starts every 4 days or do you want to wait until all games complete in a round before the next round starts? The reply will be around 210 versus Zero. In favour of the Scheduled start. That is how unsuitable waiting for every game finishing is to a League system involving Circa 200 Players. It is common sense really.
POSSIBLE IMPROVEMENT: Facilitate games being scheduled to start by date, or day frequency, every 4 days, every Week, etc. Benefits: Much Better Tournaments, Faster Tournaments, Leagues.
2. Players cannot select their own Maps.
So in Tournaments where you see HOME MAPS for example and it is 1v1. These cannot be ran as Auto Tournaments. Just be aware, when you know this, you can shape your tournament accordingly.
Although Benga did point out: "true, for your example your tournament is using round robin and that's not an option,
however it is an option for 6 man escalaing games where each player picks a map for his group/entire tournament"
3. Tie Breakers
Any Tournament with Tie Breaker games are used to split players who are drawn. Also No can do. Be aware. Shape your Tournaments accordingly.
4. Game Start Process
All players must be included in games at the game setup stage. Inviting 1 player to a multi or 2 player game and the Tournament Organiser manually inviting their opponent/s later is not possible like you can do in player set up games. No possibility for 'Home' and 'Away' games utilising Fog as Home advantage. No biggie, but just be aware.
POSSIBLE IMPROVEMENT: Have option to start games with 1 player spot filled and grant Tournament Organiser permission to invite other players. If this is a simple fix (Can currently do it in Player set up games), then do it, if not, Organisers should be aware it is not possible.
SUMMARY:
AT's are practically only suitable for relatively simple Tournaments. I would love to see AT's being capable of running 90% of player led Tournaments. That ain't going to be overnight, but, if we can pick the right improvements hopefully we can make this tool a lot more useful.
IMPROVEMENTS:
There are 2 suggested improvements above. The 1st is huge because it infinitely increases the capability of existing Tournament capabilities. The 2nd suggestion may be a simple fix as the capability already exists in player set up games.
Hopefully someone finds this helpful and I get feedback and other ideas from Tournament Organisers.
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On the previous thread, there was a notable response from
GeneralFault, to save him re-posting, here is his post:
GeneralFault wrote:Well, I'm a littlebit caught in the middle with this.
Auto-tournaments are probably created to serve a single purpose and as a step of making lives easy, but they are not flexible to create certain tournaments.
I think it is a better plan to create an API (
https://www.conquerclub.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=529) with topic (
https://www.conquerclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=529&t=235795) and the explanation of topic (
https://www.conquerclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=529&t=86562).
With an API (perhaps even secured by a login and password) you give the flexibility to create games for tournaments automatically from a PHP-website, an App or an Excel-sheet.
Currently, for the Super League or the Champions League of Craig25, I created an Excel to manage the players, scores, draw and sequence. To give an example, we fetch the scores of results from the CC-API and automatically we calculate the scores and the standings. It should be a very big bonus to also create games, because this reduces the workload to a minimum and it makes the lives of so many volunteers quite easy. This means that for instance 6400 games can be setup with the click of a button.
There also lies sometimes the downside. I can totally understand that Tournament Directors or the Owners of CC want to prevent creating hundreds of games that lead to potentially pollution of databases and the risk of overcompute, overstorage and overnetworking (the 3 major components of hosting prices in general).
Again, this is probably worth the risk but this feature lies in the hands of the
entrepeneurs (those who are willing to take calculated risks to raise more involvement) or the
maintainers (those who keep the current status quo alive)...
time to choose sides; are we entrepeneurs or maintainers....
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