Sunday is coming soon, so I'll touch a few points that directly relate to the organisation of the nearest event:
1. Score format (points for places instead of wins, distribution)
2. Weeklies - banned beta? (spoiler: no)
3. Pay 2 Play (Paypal quest)
4. Alex (behaviour, ban or not)
5. Meiynas (connection, solution?)
6. S shout-out to zeknife (future things, maybe)
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1. Score format (points for places instead of wins, distribution):
Uh, I don't really have any specific thing in mind; it just kinda is the standard distribution used for various small scale Grand Slam whatever type tournaments (the big ones tend to operate on powers of 2 and give like, 128 points for a tourney win, but that's a bit of a hassle).
The original being 10/7/5/3/1/0 depending on placement, but then I added +1pt for participation and left the first place at 10 Pts because I don't like 11.
But yes of course, various different point distributions are possible. Also common is something akin to 15/10/5/0, or 32/24/16/12/8/4/2/1 or whatever. I just took the easiest one.
What I wanted to avoid is TOO MUCH of a focus on 1st place - it should be notable, but not notable enough that someone who gets 1st place once-twice has a free ticket into Top8 right here.
A thing I feel zeknife didn't mention strongly enough is that -regardless whether this point change makes it through or not- if someone leaves prior to the end of the tournament, they should always be awarded zero points.
Regardless whether they win two matches due to severe lag then get kicked, or RQ in the fourth round, or whatever else, none of this should ever result in them getting points towards the Top8 - one could even construct a scenario where a guy needs a further 3 points to get a guaranteed spot in Top8, enters Sbats, gets 3 wins, then quits "cus I reached my goal". You don't want this.
a) In that case 10/8/6/4/2/1 sounds reasonable and can work, I'd say lets try it out for this season.
b) So far we've been giving points to people who leave prematurely as we know unexpected'n'unintended problems can happen, and we wanted to still accommodate people when that is the case.
Over time there were cases, however, when this cushion worked as de facto pardoning otherwise non-desired situations: people entering without caring about the state of their connection (still worth it if they get a win or two before being DQed), people leaving mid-tournament because ragequit, people leaving mid-tournament because they lost interest for the evening, plus the theoretical scenario of someone leaving after he already secured the number of wanted points.
As the rule apparently protects a few unwanted things that can be stopped (or limited) without it, I'd say I agree here. Lets have zero points for players who leave before they finish their set in the evening's final round.
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2. Weeklies - banned beta? (spoiler: no):
I want to say if Retail is forced for T8, it should also be forced for the individual weeks, but no
No, that is a very bad idea. Logical, but please don't.
I don't think that's necessary.
If someone is really dedicated to retail, he can simply not agree to playing beta in weeklies, so there's no
"you want to beat me with a team you won't be allowed to use in season finals anyway, that's cheating". And if both players agree on beta, it means both of them are fine with playing a version that might not be used in finals. It's their risk and responsibility then, who am I to forbid them from having fun. Telling two people in a beta lobby
"you can't do that!" would be pretty silly for all parties involved, anyway.
I realise some players might have Skullbats as the only time of the week to play beta vs competitive players (who agree), so yeah, that stays.
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3. Pay 2 Play (Paypal quest):
2) Charge people some (small) amount of money to enter, then people will want to enter each week and learn a combo and stuff to get the most out of their investment. Or they might just not want to enter at all, idk. When combined with #1 though you could use this money for the cash prize, like it's a tournament or something #wow #woah
While I like the idea in theory, I think this could result in a major blow to turnout, even if it's as little as 1 euro for entry for a whole season.
Part of the players we get are friends of friends, caught last minute in Steam chat or something.
"Hey, there's an online thing" is tempting,
"Hey, there's an online thing that you have to pay for to enter" is much less so, and of course disabled late entries without a paid ticket. Might create some rather bad PR, and I expect we'd lose more people than we'd gain, as non-top players
know they'd be paying to enter rather than investing in a future jackpot they have no chance to win.
Also, organisational gehenna. I reckon half of the regulars don't have a Paypal, half of the rest will forget to pay, someone will sniff a scam, someone will try to make up for not having Paypal cash with giving me some Steam cards which may be worth more than the euro, which is good will but what am I supposed to do with this... I'm hoping I'm not blowing things out of proportion when I think this would be more trouble than it's worth.
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4. Alex (behaviour, ban or not):
I can't really comment, as I have no idea what Alex did when for how often and against how many warnings
And I do trust your judgment, as you certainly don't strike me as a person who will nilly willy ban people for a minor transgression
But I do think "indefinite banning" may be too harsh a punishment 'no matter what' he did
If he goes to you and honestly apologizes for misbehaviour while really really promising that he won't do it again, he could be pardoned?
He could be given a chance then, yes.
The points I listed
here (followed by persistent spamtrolling in streamchat over multiple Twitch accounts during that season's finals) were a problem back then, and they'd still be a problem now.
People have been farewelled from Skullbats for less and the only reason amnesty for Alex is being brought up is because he's a good player, not because he regrets anything.
I don't think rules on behaviour should be bent based on how good a player is. Still, a season-long ban was punishment enough for
past misbehaviour, and I appreciate Alex-the-player and Alex-the-person-who-writes-helpful-guides. If we could have that guy in Skullbats without having Alex-that-creates-a-toxic-atmosphere fellow around...
A reason Alex was banned and why the ban wasn't so far lifted is that I've never seen him express an honest, voluntary resolution to desist his disruptive ways.
If that happened, well, it wouldn't be that voluntary here, but it could still be a reason to give him a
chance to prove it.
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5. Meiynas (connection, solution?):
I don't know, keep a list of people who are known to have awful connections and force them to do the [Run-Cmd-ping google.com -n 50] stuff prior to the tournament,
where if they go over say 75 you keep an eye on them and if they go over say 125 they just aren't allowed to enter?
For most people we get in Skullbats, their connection is either unquestionably good or unquestionably bad.
The one person who is "controversial" connection-wise in our weeklies is Meiynas. That much could be seen already in the above several posts.
(NOTE: that is the only real controversy about him. Obviously there aren't going to be punishments for playing solo, or Fukua, or soloFukua, that would be silly. Retail gets beta changes tomorrow, everyone knew that's gonna eventually happen. If someone avoided learning beta, it was his risk to do so up to this point and he starts paying the price tomorrow. It's fair.)
Now, I haven't experienced a connection that would concern me when playing Meiynas, but it's clear others have, so it's an issue to solve.
I'd like to approach this problem in a way as fair for him as possible, though.
If I'd ask Meiynas to do the mentioned "Run-Cmd-ping google.com -n 50" test, would that be an objective enough way to check whether his connection allows him entry for the evening?
If so, what should be the min/max/average threshold deciding whether it's a
"yes" or
"not tonight". The mentioned 125?
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6. A shout-out to zeknife (future things, maybe):
Passing the torch to a player with a better focus on improving may honestly be a step in the right direction. With this the overall mood of the weeklies could be changed from casual routine to that of encouragement and healthy competition. I already wanted Zeknife to start his own tournaments in his EU SG Improvement group, but perhaps this is as good a solution.
I'd like to hear
@zeknife's take on this, including his interest in participating in Skullbats on the organisational side.
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