I am going to address it here, as oppose to the subsection, since the main problem is due to having tournaments isolated. So without farther adue.
The Problem: The main problem is activity. There isn't any. There is no interest for it. The only ones interested in these tournament like matches are lurkers, and the hardcore members that participate.
This is due to the fact that the tournament is isolated from the main forum, which limits the amount traffic. So its of our interest for regular members to extend beyond the small circle of core members. Even if those attracted are just spectators, that simply comment in the TDT (Tournament Discussion Thread), it helps to add positive reinforcement, and hold an interest. Because if there is no interest, the matches die.
It should not come to a huge surprise, the average members who comes to the comic versus only looks into the main forum (not the battlezone), its attention locked on what the topics are in the main topic...especially when you have new topics created on a daily biases.
Another observation of mine, is that ever since the creation of the subform, activity in these tournaments have taken a dive.
Its not to say that the Battlezone does not hold any purpose. I think its a fantastic place to archive all previous competitive matches. Therefore it should stay. However, these competitive matches where more popular, and flourished when they took place in the main forum, as opposed to the sub forum.
The Solution: The real solution would be to hold all fututure matches, and topics in the main forum, stickied/tagged so it does not get buried under the main forums activity.
Once that season, tourney, or match ends. Untag, and move it to the Battlezone.
Just consider how beneficial it would to have the discussion, and matches in the Versus forum, as oppose to the battlezone, and you may come to understand that said matches will stand a better chance of not only reaching out to a bigger crowd, but hold down an interest better.
tl;dr: Bring back competitive matches and topics in the versus forums. Sticky or Tag them to keep them from getting buried under the main forums activity. To retire said topics, un-pin said topics, and move them back to the battlezone so they can be archived.
Drafting Characters
Considering that the Tier Topic are currently closed, and that character placement are up for dispute let alone those not on the list. I have a pair of suggestions.
The approval should not fall to the Host or direct participants per say but forwarded to either a "Panel of Judges" or "Official Draft Topic". If not both.
I would prefer a panel of judges, and if the judges are torn between making a decision, leave it to the Official Draft Thread, for a majority decision with a 70/30 ratio to be properly approved.
Something like 50/50 or even 60/40 seems a bit off, and leaves to much on the grey line that a character is being passed on with too much doubt or uncertainty.
So yeah something like....
Set up an official panel of judges. To which said drafted character for said tier, would be forwarded for approval or...
Set up an official draft thread, where said drafts are go through a "Yay or Nay", via majority vote. A general approval rating should be something close to a 70/30 ratio. Meaning nothing less than a 70% approval should be considered a pass. Anything less, and the character would need to be withdrawn, unless the participant properly appeals, and convinces members to sway their judgement.
Would be ideal. Both have been used before, and with a good deal of successes.
Questions, comments, concerns, suggestions, and any form of feedback are welcomed.
tourneys, and and the like, being isolated in their own subforum has done more harm than good, due to the relative inactivity of said subforum. i mean, back before tourneys were hidden away, it seems like there were more people than we knew what to do with volunteering to be involved in every facet of them--but nowadays it's become extremely hard just to get people to commit to judging matches, let alone participating in them.
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Last edited by Galan007 on Jul 8th, 2014 at 10:28 PM
Have to admit I'd been on the site for some time before I even realized the battlezone was there and THEN only because Curry placed a thread in the standard forum about his tourney.
As someone who participated in tournaments on many sites ( currently signed up in and battling in about 8 IIRC) I certainly would have been more active in them had I known from the start, and have been very surprised there are so few here.
It's ironic, that I on another forum started a call a while ago to have a separate forum for tournaments etc because I had to go through up to 8 pages in the main battle thread to find all the tourney's I was signed up in. I would suggest instead a single linked thread called "current tourney's" in which there was maintained links to all current tournament battles. If one stickies all the tourney's and you get a few you might end up with a whole front page of stickies.
This is a pretty damn good idea. Members could post updates to running tourneys, nudges to judges, links to new tourney sign up threads or active ones. The OP could be constantly updated with links of what ever tourney battles are currently underway.
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not too long ago all tourney matches were in the main forum anyway. not sure why the shift ever took place....
i'd also like to address a couple of these rules for clarification as these seem to be the general rules the bz's will follow.
1. No posting limit (free form posting, instead)
not sure when or why this changed but it was limited not too long ago. imo it should be limited again. 5-7 posts would be plenty. also makes it easier on judges if they know they won't have to read a million posts and it ensures matches will end within a reasonable time frame. i think there should also be a time limit though. 7 days, 10 days, something like that. again, get the match up, get it done and get it judged. momentum is essential to these things--bz's but tourneys in particular.
2. No time manipulation.
i've always had a problem with this and recently was less then thrilled with the way it was interpreted by judges vs tourney host. imo this should be dealt with in exactly the same way matter manipulation is dealt with (which was the view the host had as i discussed it, only to find judges did not view it that way): that is to say time manip that does not affect an opponent directly should be allowed. ie--no aging, no time freeze, no going back in time to heal injuries (that would make someone unkillable), but other versions of time manip should be fine and would open up some possible new characters. if it's treated like matter manip there should be no problems.
3. No insta-kill tactics such as teleporting into solid objects. Even if an attack isn’t instantaneous, any attack that could, as a matter of its nature, not be defended against is considered this.
this is a tricky one imo. mindrape would technically fall into this category if you didn't happen to pick someone with natural or technological defenses. that means that people are forced to choose within a certain set of characters because if person (a) chooses a strong psi but person (b) does NOT choose someone who can defend from psi powers, person (b) can be insta-killed in an indefensible way. that is no different from blink porting someone into the ground because a person doesn't have a shield. what's the solution? not sure. i don't like neutering psi's, but i don't like being forced to pick from the ltd number of characters who can defend against powerful psi characters. i speak from personal experience on this point. do we open a set of matches that allow just psi's? continue to simply force people to risk taking a character that can be mindraped? not sure. maybe there is no solution, but i think a discussion about this should take place. in a couple tiers in particular if you get the strongest psi first, you almost can't be beaten. (not talking about smurph and cable here....)
3. Characters will not have knowledge of who they are fighting pre-fight. In battle, they will only be able to know things if the two characters already knew each other.
obviously this in untrue on a second or subsequent title defense, which is fine. it does allow challengers to tailor a pick, but heavy is the head and all that.....
4. Non-offensive matter manipulation is allowed.
i think this should be looked at again as well. no insta-kill, but if someone chooses ss in a high herald match, a major part of his powerset is matter manip. if someone chose say, iron man for some dumb reason, ss should be able to change his armor to tissue paper imo. if a character can use it, and has shown it in combat situations, then it should be allowed. it simply needs to be well supported. again i think it is at least something that should be revisited as it would open up new characters and new strategies.
5. No duplication.
6. No power copying in any way.
i think this should be allowed as well. only a few characters can pull it off and in most cases it should be answerable. i'd be interested in hearing specific reasons this rule should be left intact.
7. Only experience carries from previous fights, and only information you could have reasonably discovered in the fight is learned.
seems mostly pointless.
8. No immortal characters. Characters should be able to be defeated by reasonably accessible means. Healing factors strong enough to blur the line with this are also banned.
this pertains to almost no one but i agree. out of curiosity who do some of you see falling into this category?
9. While battlefields will change, it is assumed that nobody can leave the whole of the battlefield by any means. This also means no BFR or self-BFR. If you fly too far, you hit an impenetrable wall.
this should also be changed because some characters naturally break this, like nightcrawler, cloak. it should be determined by time or intent. supes can't leave a bf to sun dip. it's been hinted that jonzz's phasing is a result of shifting his mass to a different dimension. self bfr? no way, obviously. again, this needs to be far less restricting than it has been imo. specific instances can be discussed as they arise but running from a bf for more than a second or 2 should clearly not be allowed.
[r]10. No reality warping.[/b]
why? we allow matter manip of environments, why not reality manip? and who really has the ability in a combat situation? seems pointless so long as, again, no manip to cause insta-death.
11. Rules may be changed if certain strategies become an obvious problem.
less stringency on rules will lead to less ambiguity and fewer situations where individual situations need to be dealt with. it will more importantly, make it easier on judges who are hellbent on enforcing every rule or wondering if this is allowed, or that is allowed. to this end, i think if judges are NOT certain if a rule has been broken, they should discuss it, in thread or among each other. it's very hard as a competitor to have one judge say yeah that's fine, and another say no that's illegal.
12. Matches last 14 days.
too long imo.
13. ( Prep) You will receive a 5 minute briefing about your opponent. You cannot gather gear that would not be considered standard gear.
too long imo. 10 secs would work.
i get the reason for most of these rules, (i've been around tourneys and bz more than pretty well anyone left on this forum...) but in the last tourney (and the one prior) and recently in the bz's, there has been FARRRRRRRRR too much confusion over rules, FARRRRRRR too many personal interpretations of rules by judges. i can tell you definitively things were much much better before they were so closely policed. if more things were allowed it would require less personal interpretation and judges could focus on WHO DEBATED THE BEST, which is where the focus should be.
i'd also like to ADD a rule--judging decisions should be in no more than 5 days from the conclusion of any match. if you can't get a vote in in 5 days--DON'T SIGN UP TO JUDGE! nothing, and i mean nothing kills matches like judges who don't vote. judging isn't always easy and it is immensely appreciated by competitors, (which is why i think we need to look at rules changes to make it EASIER to judge) but it NEEDS to be done in a reasonable time. obviously RL happens, but judges should know going in the EXPECTATION is to get the vote in as quickly as possible. it's essential. if only 3 judges can be found, that should be fine, though 5 is always preferable.
anyway, yeah. to sum up--rules should be loosened in several areas imo while maintaining the spirit and integrity of the matches. if a judge feels someone has broken the spirit of a rule, THAT should be the deciding factor in determining if something was or was not illegal. otherwise, focus on who debated the best.
I want to chime in on the mind-rape ruling because it came up in a discussion with Leo. Mind-rape is indeed an indefensible form of attacking in it's own way, sending someone into an illusionary world forever with a Genjutsu illusion could be banned as a one-hit kill while the same effect in a psychic character would be accepted.
Psychic characters have enough versatility as it is: visual illusions, telepathy to synchronize an attack with partners, mental fatigue and fear could be exploited as legitimate stratégies. Since many telepaths have access to telekinesis it's not as if they would become useless overnight.
I think that inmortal/healing characters could be allowed as long as a clear rule about winning without a kill is established. If ko is a win, who cares about inmortality? If the Inmortal finds a way to avoid ko he should be able to use a outliving strategy legally, since it's a very niche goal to set to begin with.
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i'm for any rule that allows more character options but does not undermine the fair spirit of these matches. KO is defined by what? 10secs? imo that would be pretty fair.
I think many of these 'rules' are here to determine a certain power level of character, likely because they were copied from a tournament with a specific power level. The way that the Battlezone forum works now, where the rules apply to matches from Low Street to High Herald, we should leave it up to the tiers to restrict power level, not the rules.
I basically think we should have:
10 relative seconds of prep/briefing (no super speed or time manip used to extend)
Immortality or healing cannot be greater than the reasonable power output of the tier the character is drafted in. If so, the character must be drafted at the next tier up. ie, if Wolverine cannot be KO'd by a reasonable low meta power output, Wolverine has to be drafted at mid meta.
Any attack cannot be reasonably indefensible within the tier it is used. Ie, if Blink teleporting objects within other people is reasonably indefensible within mid meta, she cannot use that tactic, or must be drafted at a higher tier to do so.
Win by KO, Kill or BFR (bfr maybe not, I dunno...)
That's where I'd start anyways. It obviously is missing some stuff, and could be phrased a little more clearly, but that's what it should boil down to.
Another note: it should be clear that rules are for the judges to pay attention to just as much as the competitors. Debaters may make the argument that a tactic is illegal, and may call for a host/judge ruling, but then obviously it's up to the judges to interpret the rules, so they should know that going in.
Big time fan of Tourneys, as well debater vs debater matches. New to this forum though.
So with that said I love to see a thread of just upcoming tourney threads, or sign up threads with this Battlzone.
Honestly on other sites like the Vine, you post the sign up thread which lays down the rules of said tourney in the same thread. You fill the spots with people telling you or PMing you their teams, and you as the creator make the matches. Voters are most of the time the very people on the battle forum who must vote for better debater rather than who they think personally wins. Not always the case, but get yourself dedicated judges, or shout out to respected users on said forum battle sections.
Anyway I done many tourneys on other forums, and thats how it goes. Does not seem to be the case here? Or am I missing something?
How are the tourneys done here is what I like to know
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