No Bot! We don't need it. And I really do not want any structure where we have tourney-specific ELO/MMR/PSR. I get where you're coming from as far as a typical League structure, but that's not what's going to be a good fit for HONGAF because of the mix of players we have. A lot of you are very good, but take your extreme tryhard to TMM, no bots needed and you win coins and MMR. The most talented groups that want to take the next step can join actual tourneys, like we already do.
Like Swag and puppet I believe that player tiers are a great idea, although my execution of the concept might be a bit different. What are our goals for the tourney?
>Have fun/friendly competition
We need balanced teams for this. The focus should also be on participation and less on individual stats like KDR. Win share might be a good stat to track, and we could reward the top 3 players in win% for each tier for example. This is a tricky one though, as I am personally fond of persistent teams. I honestly think we can pull off having 3 teams again because of the influx of new players but at the same time I'm can see the negatives from teaming up. An old pickup basketball league I had did persistent Black vs White teams composed of 7-8 players each (this league also had 3 tiers for players). We could possibly try having just two persistent teams and split the players as best we can.
Encourage everyone to play, especially NEW players
We should move away from a hardcore rating system that will naturally distance the less experienced players from the hardcore. The tier system acknowledges that divide from the start and allows us to work our incentives around it
Have more games
We should do everything we can to encourage people to play. And again, creating a system that will reward balanced teams and punish stacking teams is the key. I explicitly want to avoid a "captain" picking the best 4 players available because he wants to win. Perhaps enforce a rule that from a pool of available players any given night, those with the lowest total games played at that point must be chosen for play.
Stop new players from backing out from playing because they're afraid they might not give their team the best chances to win
Every player is a contribution to any team! Should we maybe also reward the players with the most games played?
Unfortunately, I don't have a concrete tourney structure in mind at all. I'm afraid of individual play but also afraid that people might not like organized teams at all. My first idea was 3 tiers of players, with each one having a point modifier that affects how much point his/her team gets after each game.
example:
WIN : 3 points
LOSE : 1 point
Player Tiers:
(+1) New players - having a +1 guy on your team will increase the amount of points your team gets after a game.
(0) Average players - no effect on point gain after a match
(-1) Veterans - has a negative effect on point gain after a match
(-2) Evil Tryhards - nuff said
I'm thinking that this would naturally steer us towards balancing teams because if you always play your best guys, you're not really getting much points, and a weaker team can possibly get more points even in a loss.
Is this necessary? Perhaps not, if we can enforce the tier system somehow so that there will always be the same mix of tiered players on both teams. But not everyone is online at the same time so that's not guaranteed.
Right now nothing's set in stone so I definitely want to hear what everyone else thinks. We want to capture the fun atmosphere of IHs and make it just a little bit more competitive (coins!) without going overboard. IHs can get very salty and I definitely hope the IHLs won't magnify that
