shdw.puppet

Points: 3,599, Level: 39

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ok guys, some of you know that I do work for TWL (very, very little work but still :P ) and I also am involved in an effort to make TWL a better place for competition. So, on that note, I do have to say something before I begin. I do not have upper level management permission or request to make this thread or conduct this research. I think it is important to hear from the people that are and will use the services of TWL before making major changes to the software and structure. I AM NOT PROMISING ANY OF THE SUGGESTIONS MADE HERE WILL BE IMPLEMENTED. I can only suggest and implement what I am told to implement. Any opinions I express here are not necessarily those of TWL, they are mine. I made a thread because the 1000 character limit on comments was not doing me or anyone else justice.

So, here is what I have so far, some of these are improper's and some of them are Hawkeye's.

Here are a handful of ideas:

I agree. It is time for an update of everything. You think it is painful using it? try admin on it, or worse, news posting. ugh.

I had not thought of that and that is an excellent idea that I think would not be terribly difficult to implement. I havent done scheduling since my days in TWL COD4 so I dont know how any of the scheduling systems work, any specifics would be welcome.

I do not know how feasible this is for TF2, CS:S and COD4 both have a third party solution in use by TWL, as do other games I think. It is a good idea, but would take dedicated, trained staff and we all know how well TWL does that.

Again, not something I will probably ever have control over, TF2 is looking for admins, send in an application if you think you can do magic. I did.

Again, I agree. Swiss pairing was designed for chess and under the assumption that all matches will be played. With even one forfieted match, the system more or less breaks down.

Talk to prince. Or whoever gets the new admin position. If I do, I will try and make sure this is implemented.

I agree 1000x, from what I understand, someone liked indulge or vilepickle spent some time on his knees or something like that.

The point is, Ducky had a reason to be biased in this situation and from the way it sounded, he absolutely was biased in his decision. Giving admins the authority to make decisions like that when their teams stand to gain as a result doesn't help my opinion that TWL is fast turning into a joke league.

There are policies on that, and there is someone you can email about that, escalating up past Prince if you dont get a response.

That is what I am trying to do here, I am no admin, but I can report on this feedback to people who will do something about it. Open dialog is important, but I did see your post and at first, I could see why they were getting defensive. It does not make them in the right, or you in the wrong, I think it was an error in communication that definitely could have been handled better by the administrators.


Now for hawkeye

See above, I agree. It actually will have been a decade soon...

Great idea, will make sure that this gets sent up the right pipes.

I am not sure what is being said here, could you clarify? If you are talking about game statistics, I am not sure how easy that would be to implement from TF2 without needing a server plugin, something I dont think TWL wants to do right now.

This stems from a problem with the site in general. Almost all site functions are an extension of the forum paradigm, something I think horribly inappropriate for the type of service trying to be provided. This is going to be addressed.

Again, unless I am made admin, not much I can do here.

See above, but note that I agree 100% on both points.

Anything else anyone has to add to this list? I am not talking about administrative problems. It is one thing to beat a dead horse, that has been discussed a lot and is not something that can be fixed here. I am talking about site and league features etc. Like the emailing system and stuff like that. If you dont want to discuss it here, or you want to discuss it with me one on one, you can get me in the #teamwarfare channel on gamesurge if I am on or at shdwpuppet@teamwarfare.com.

Lets work together to make a fun, mostly casual league that doesnt make you cry with frustration. Again, I cannot promise anything, nor is any of this official. Think of this as more of a complaints and grievances list or as "market research" you guys, whether you pay or not, are customers and users of TWL and I at least want to make it better for you guys.

End essay :P

Sway

Points: 2,514, Level: 32

Activity: 16.7%

I'll post some of my opinions later when I've got a bit more time, but I'll say one thing: thanks, shdw.puppet for taking some initiative to try getting TWL out of the gutter it's dragged itself into over the last few seasons. You spent quite some time here, and hopefully some of these ideas come to fruition.

improperdancing

Points: 380, Level: 7

Activity: 21.2%

Well, you already posted everything I had to say.

Waffle

Points: 314, Level: 6

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For the sake of staying on topic I'll say that I agree with all these points except for the Anti-cheat program. We've all seen how many times the ESEA client has broken right before a match and how many crashes/other problems it causes.

shdw.puppet

Points: 3,599, Level: 39

Activity: 66.7%

hey guys, on topic please. I dont care if you discuss this, but it doesnt belong here. Thanks =D

Hawkeye

Points: 5,054, Level: 48

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As far as standings, the site records the wins and losses, but those standings do not really count as far as playoffs. Those are actually done by the pairing system used behind the scenes that really didn't necessarily match the website.

The website simply needs to be what the is lived off of for playoff stuff so it is obvious for everyone, and nothing happening behind the scenes.

improperdancing

Points: 380, Level: 7

Activity: 21.2%

Waffle, I was just going by what I was told by Synchronicity.

Regardless, my point was that admins shouldn't have the power to control the fates of teams in their own divisions, and I stand by that point.

Hawkeye

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Conceptually, I agree, but it isn't always practical to be honest. If there is doubt of an admins integrity, that is a separate issue, but, to date, I don't know of any TF2 GM that has malicious intents and tried to screw anyone over the past couple of years.

As far as Anti-cheat, I would honestly need to be sold that the client actually does something before it's required to be used by the players. CEVO AC function itself I really don't know what it does or does not do, but the match making aspects of it and ensuring people are in with the client running is well worth it as an example.

If you can change the configs of the match to work within a single half, and not two halfs, tf2lobby can be used with minimal changes for your stats and so forth if anyone. (One reason why XPL used the 30 minutes and out honestly was to allow this honestly) But tracking down Floor Master has proven to be somewhat difficult to discuss, but it's worth pursuing.

Have admins/support available a couple different ways for convenience. Livezilla is a good free solution for web based support that could work for the league also. Or a Webpage with the mibbit plugin on it that can be opened within the Steam Overlay to get support from within game. It's mostly a convenience thing.

shdw.puppet

Points: 3,599, Level: 39

Activity: 66.7%

I agree completely and that is mainly the fault of the website being largely incapable of doing anything competently.

on AC and matchmaking and stuff like that, the AC is not in my realm of even mild influence, that would be something you would have to take up independently with an admin. As for stats and stuff, it would have to be done on a game by game basis, but does anyone know anything about the steam API's? Do they have stats on a game by game basis or anything like that?

I will look into the IRC thing.

Thanks for your support guys, the official TWL position is one of secrecy about this thing, but I think that actually asking users is never, ever a bad policy when making a product.

RubberDucky6

Points: 1,196, Level: 19

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Just to clear this up. Both teams came to me on the last day when all matches were suppose to played by because gr didn't think it was fair syn added players that day since they hadn't been on the roster through the rest of the season. I didn't think that was fair either and syn had other players on their roster, so I just asked if they would please use the people on their roster that hadn't been added within the past day 6/27/2010.

Also brackets are being fixed as Prince made them and I informed him they are wrong so look for them to be fixed soon.

Thanks

improperdancing

Points: 380, Level: 7

Activity: 21.2%

It my opinion it's just not a risk worth taking. Personally I wouldn't want to be in a position where I had to make a decision about two teams that were in my division, especially when my own team's seeding spot may benefit from the outcome of my decision.

You'd only need two admins to make this happen as well, which is something that pretty much every league should already have. For example, if TWL has admin A in Div 2 and admin B in Div 3, it's a simple matter of having admin B handle issues over divs 1 and 2 and admin B handling issues over divs 3 and 4. It's a simple solution that ensures there is no possibility of bias in the first place.

Bias is almost impossible to prove, but at the same time avoiding having to prove it at all is the ideal situation, and it's not that hard to do so either.

Hawkeye

Points: 5,054, Level: 48

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From my perspective, If I have any doubts on a players ability to follow the league rules, they should be immeadiately removed from the league admin position.

If the decision is over his own team or related to his own teams position, if the rules were followed properly, it should not be a problem. I don't think it's worth all that effort for something that for the most part is not happening and typically has a fairly significant check and balance of the teams/players involved.

Ducky,

Good work fixing the brackets bro.

Shadow,

The APIs are generally not all that useful for stats and such. What could happen is players can login to the site using their steam ID, join a team and be good to go without the need to enter their IDs and so forth. It make things easier (OpenID API). But again your looking at a significant site re-write.

Honestly, enough coders exists in TF2, a site to simply handle teams/matches/scheduling isn't a huge issue. To be honest, the way the TWL site has remained static all these years, I am really wondering if they could fix the issue in a timely manner to make it work.

shdw.puppet

Points: 3,599, Level: 39

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Thanks for all the feedback guys, I will keep it in mind as we move along towards potential changes in TWL.

wanderrful

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now there's a very interesting question for me:

assuming that matches will not be played, what is the fairest way to assign them?

Hawkeye

Points: 5,054, Level: 48

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As far as XPL, I had the cross divisional games off the bat in Week 1 (Central vs East), then Week 2 was inter conference games with the Week 1 FFL when possible facing eachother when I could swing it.

As far as FFW and FFL, they were written in as a 5-0 for Push, but weighted slightly differently then a played game for the winnign side, the FFL side lost points from their RPI.

There really isn't a "fair" way to approach it, but that seemed to be the best approach within what I could work out. basically a FFL could keep a 14-0-0 0-2 team from a #1 seed to a #12 seed

shdw.puppet

Points: 3,599, Level: 39

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The fairest way will always be a round robin style assignment (so everyone plays everyone the same number of times) but that means that divisions would have to have the same number (or a factor of) the number of weeks in a season... not always feasible.

The question would have to be given to someone who works with algorithms, my mathematics training is not extensive by any means, I only know enough math to know that finding the fairest answer would be hard, involve simple, but many calculations etc.

Or everyone could just show up to their damn matches...

wanderrful

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and that's precisely why its interesting. the round robin thing is the trivial answer, but we're talking bigger numbers than the 4 per group thing that you normally do in sports tournaments.


i was a math major in college


that's why i found it interesting

i'll try to think about it. it'll be like when Blaise Pascal solved the problem of finding the fairest way to split a prize pot when a series of matches is cut off prematurely. fun

chances are that someone has already found the answer though so i'll just google

wanderrful

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Here's an idea that I've never seen before:

click here because the forum resized the smart picture wrong



God, I'm so handsome.

wanderrful

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that is a different question that requires another solution, and revolves around a methodology to rate teams to better predict a fair match.

shdw.puppet

Points: 3,599, Level: 39

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so you are saying that after a team forfeits n/2 or some arbitrary number, they are disqualified. To make sure it stays fair, instead of them playing more matches, a team is added that essentially creates a bye for each team that would normally play them?

wanderrful

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the bounds on that number are not arbitrary. the number that you pick in between those two (2 and n/2) are what is arbitrary. there is a reason for 2 and n/2.

if you let the number be 1, for example, then you will be disqualified after forfeitting one match — that's unreasonable and most certainly not fair!

if you let the number be n/2 exactly, then if any team forfeits n/2 matches, then the tournament will immediately end right there because the aforementioned team will have forfeitted all of their remaining matches, forcing everyone else to not play eachother! in short, it needs to be at most n/2 to ensure that AT LEAST ONE match will be played in all cases.


fix a division.
for each occasion where a team forfeits a match, everybody else participating in said division will play one less match. that way, the number of matches played will always be the same all around at the end of the tournament.


only if the number of teams in said division is odd, a "ghost team" is created to make it even again and when it is time for a given team to play this "ghost team", it will be the equivalent of a bye week/match-day for the given team.

so in all cases, the number of teams participating in said division will be even. then when a team is disqualified for whatever reason mid-through the season, they are replaced by a[nother] "ghost team".

shdw.puppet

Points: 3,599, Level: 39

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ah I see what you are saying

the problem with that is every week in TWL last season there was at least one team per division with a ffl. So we end up with no matches played (numerically) and nothing to draw rankings upon...

wanderrful

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i said "fix a division" because we only delete a match when a team in said division forfeits. when you fix something, you are specifically talking a particular one kind of whatever you fixed.

so the number of matches played amongst all of the divisions will not necessarily be the same.


in other words, if a team in division 1 forfeits a match then one match is taken away from everyone in division 1. i'm not saying anything about the other divisions.

having a different number of matches played across the different "divisions" (i'd prefer to say group of teams) does not affect fairness in any way because each "division" is an island.

Hawkeye

Points: 5,054, Level: 48

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After discussing all the issues with divsions and such, it really seems to make more sense to drop the "league" and simply run a ladder so teams can push their way to the top and play relatively closely skilled games all the way to the top. Otherwise we will be looking at Skill level issues and so forth the entire time with no real "fix" for it. Plus forfeits won't matter to much.

shdw.puppet

Points: 3,599, Level: 39

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On some level I agree with you, but then there is no season dynamic or anything like that, no finals, no real meaning to predictions or rankings etc. There is more to gaming than just the game sometimes.

TWL does run ladders that are fun to play around on and I encourage everyone to get involved in them if they are interested. But at the end of the day, the league and season paradigm brings good competition and matches people care about more than a ladder match could bring.

Hawkeye

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The issue with TWL seasons is, you have entire divsions collapsing repeatedly, a typical season quite a few teams are well off if they play 5 matches, let along the 8 they should. I can agree that the "League" feeling is good, but the teams in TWL simply are not stable enough to keep it up, for example loosing records make the playoffs, divsions collapse to 3-4 teams making only 3 games count IF the remaing teams actually played eachother, otherwise the system only works of one or two matches. Leagues simply require teams to play every game, if that isn't happening, there isn't a lot of point in having the league honestly.

wanderrful

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Then here's what you do:

Make it Ladder, but slap the word League on it so that everybody is happy.

Make it so that at a given time, the "Season" of the "League" is finished and whoever is on top is the winner! Hooray what a great league! (I support taking away playoffs -- I say save the eliminations for tournaments)



However there will be people who will be mad and quit because they are stuck in the middle 3rd of the rankings, so you'll have to make a new ladder IM EAN LEAGUE -- LEAGU ELEAGUE LEAGUE for them so that they don't feel inadequate.

We'll have to name these two leagues... Call them Main and Amateur. But then again there will be a consistent group of people who will always be in the top 10 or so... so we'll have to make another league for them so that other people can get in on the action and feel what its like to win. We'll call that new one for the top 10 guys like... Invite... or Pro... or something.

I can't believe nobody's ever thought of this

Hawkeye

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Actually, looking at the forfeit systems a bit more, it would concern me that the admins would be somewhat arbitrarily dropping a match from the other teams. Negating games played is NEVER going to be a good idea for any league. From a PR perspective, you will alienate a lot of people if the admins to make things "fair" make playing past matches pointless, that is basically what the swiss pairing system they were using is doing given the situation and nobody liked it. For example, if we counted games with teams still int he running the seasons typically ended with 4-6 games played at most in the lower divisions, so to keep things fair to all, a few of those may not count since one team had 4 FFW, so half the season simply disapeaared. The solution works if you have 1 team that Forfeits, but when you have in a group of 10-12 teams, a FFL all 8 weeks, on occasion 2, you just nullified the league and might as well draw staws for the playoffs.

Any played match simply needs to count.

wanderrful

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I don't understand -- were you talking about my thing? If so then I think you really misunderstood what I was talking about

if you weren't talking about my thing then i'm retarded ignore me

Hawkeye

Points: 5,054, Level: 48

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Yes, the big issue i have with it is this statement:

"For each match forfeitted by a team, all other teams will will have one of their matches removed"

basically, if you have 6 teams in a mini-league, so 5 matches per team.

If Team A FF their first week, all teams drop to only 4 matches, but if Team B forfeits also, the entire league would drop to 3 matches per team to maintain the "fairness" of it as I am reading it. Everyone is dropped one match on the First FF so effectively, it's even, but the next FF would cause the same issue. So if 3 team have a FFL, the entire league basically went to pot (which is what occurs in TWL honestly)

So of their 5 possible matches, one team can potentially have half their season disqualified from consideration. Which ones do we pick to drop?

Also in the case of TWL< a single division in D3/4 I would expect teams to have 3-4 FFW during the season, so we narrowed the pool down to just half the season of play to figure out who makes the playoffs.

Simply put, I just don't think a "League" is really cut out for TWL and the skill based divisions until they can get more teams commiting and success playing a lot more. CEVO/ESEA since they don't have the skill division have a lot more leeway on things since they don't have skill divisions.

If the goal is to maintain competition with simialr skilled opponents, Ladders are simply the best solution for TF2 right now. I can't imaging the teams breaking up rate being any different then what already exists in a league format.