I'm kinda tired of derailing the ethics committee thread and I feel like this is a topic that needs to be addressed.

What I'm suggesting here is not Clan Ladder. It's the current format of CL only changed to accommodate RT settings. So essentially it is:

1. RR format (maybe swiss if we want to be fancy)
2. 5 teams per league for League A and B
3. Players will be given a game cap rather than a tournament cap
4. Games would be on weekends at sensible times so that only Australians would be screwed.

This is a very simplistic definition of what I think it should look like. Regardless, I absolutely don't think CL should stay MD. It's just not working. I don't think a better format would solve the problems CL continues to have. I don't think the current format with all the committees attempting to keep order has been an improvement. Not that it's a detriment either.

I don’t disagree. However, I think a lot of this community strives from MD. In fact that’s probably what makes this game so popular. Take my turn, go to Vegas for 48 hours...get hammered and forget what life is, then come home and take my next turn. It’d be an interesting experiment to see how many clans have the participation for RT versus MD, that’s my only qualm.

I think it would be neat to incorporate some real-time games as a portion of the overall structure of the league, but not turn all of clan league into a RT tournament.

There are very obvious problems:
1) It's a logistical nightmare.
2) Could someone stream and only invite their clan members to watch? I'm not sure any format is cheat-proof.
3) Although it is certainly fair to argue that clan league always lasts too long, running a RT clan league over the weekend (or a few weekends?) might swing too hard the other way. Wait - it's over already? That was cool, I guess. Meh, let's skip July's clan league, I'll be on vacation.

But if you had a fourth section, 1v1 MD, 2v2 MD, 3v3 MD and then a RT section - that might be an interesting addition.

I dont feel thrilled about having to ride my kangaroo into town at 3 in the morning so i can play a 2 hour RT tournament.

There definitely could be an RT aspect of CL but it'd just be so hard to organise the whole thing like that. Not only for the people running CL but for clan leaders too

@Bonsai: I think you misunderstand, allow me to elaborate.

Each game for the RR tournament would be conducted each week, so for example..

We have Clan A, B, C, D, E

Week 1: A vs B, C vs D, E bye

Week 2: B vs C, D vs E, A bye

Week 3: C vs D, E vs A, B bye

and so on.

You don't even have to do all the tournaments at the same time, so you could run something like maybe 3 tournaments concurrently until finished. Maybe you do Saturday games and Sunday games.

I don't have all the answers but I don't see why the format immediately gets thrown out as: Oh it's a logistical nightmare.

I wholeheartedly disagree. The League administration is actually pretty easy. Set the schedule and be on time to make the games.

It's that the Clan administration becomes more involved. You have a game cap to manage now. That's why I suggest only Div A and B do RT format with 5 clans each. The rest of the league could do MD format since organizationally they may not be able to handle this kind of a format. Every season though clans throw their hands in the air and call foul to all these rules and regulations. Now the clans are more involved in the administration this season than ever before. There's 3 entire committees.

Can you elaborate that cheating method? I don't understand it.

@Prophet: This proposal would absolutely shit on you upside down earth dwellers but I don't even feel bad about it. However it would not be a 2-hour tourney, it would be 1 game, so a bit less of an inconvenience

Edited 1/23/2019 03:44:16

I don't think you have to do this as clans for your test run. Just find X players willing to try it, divide them into teams and try it out.

Basically do a RT manager season, but skip the draft and just assign people. I am sure you could get it moderately balanced.

I'd be interested in a RT season like this! I wouldn't run it, but I would participate. Plus I think there are a lot of players like me that mainly play RT. You might get a different mix of players to join which could be good for the community.

Plus then some one could stream it!

Edited 1/23/2019 18:26:35

Kenny, Bonsai is basically saying you could get on a voice chat with a clanmate and share your screen with them. Then they could give you input on your game as you're playing it. I don't think that's necessarily a problem with your format, since it's no different really than sharing a screenshot.

Yeah, you CAN cheat RT, I think it is just much harder to do.

Sign me up

Sign Stig up

In response to Beren's clarification of Bonsai's comment:

There's no absolute way to stop cheating unless we literally hosted the competition in a set place with competition computers and such. Even then cheating could happen still. So if you think the goal is to be "cheat-free" there's no way to do that.

The only thing we can do is go off of the data we have. If we take a look at the ethics committee rulings you can see that most of the rulings are 2 general cases:

Case 1: Player goes inactive or is about to boot, another player logs in to avoid the boot or even play the game out.

Case 2: Player recreates game and plays it out with other players.

I can guarantee that neither of these cases will happen. RT removes the whole inactivity problem and there's simply not enough time to recreate the game and play it out. If people are still trying to get outside help during their games via 'puppeting' there's not much we can do either way. I would also like to point out I don't see the real point here at least in team games. If the goal is already to puppet in the team games which are worth the most points anyways, just put the puppet master in the game. We could also consider making the 1v1 RT games a little bit faster and thus make it harder for a puppet master to puppet 3rd party. Basically making it so they have to log in to the account. At the end of the day they can still use a VPN. The response if we found out would probably be the same though.. harsh reductions/bans.

I hope that some of you who really enjoy MD are at least interested in seeing where this discussion/format can take us. Mind you that CL doesn't have to ONLY be MD or ONLY be RT.

I had a long discussion about this with Xenophon via discord and the biggest problem I can forsee atm is inclusion of Australians. It's easy to schedule things out for Americans + Europeans. I can also schedule things out for Indians+Europeans and sometimes Americans+Europeans. Things get really awkward as soon as you try to incorporate East Asia/Australia. I don't have a good answer for you guys other than if you want to participate in Div A/B as I've laid out here you're gonna have to play at an awkward time.

Another advantage of this idea would be that many players who aren't completely retired, but don't want MD games which last four months, could participate then. I can think of multiple ones from my clan, at the very least, the number is much bigger than the number of the people which couldn't participate due to their time zone.

If you want this implemented in Clan League, I believe your best bet would be to set up a test event testing out this event. Run it a few times and see if it works out in practical theory and if players like to play in it. Then if you have the winning formula, you could set it up to implement into the Clan League system by having it for a very low % score of the points as a trial run in the main event, if it works out then you can increase the importance of it.

However, this increases the planning + organization exponentially. You would need to have a completely new organiser for this or else you'll give the organizer burnout.

Essentially, This should be a different event altogether and if it gains traction and momentum, then you can implement it into the Clan League structure perhaps.

That is what I suggestsed Plat. Just run a test case and don't worry about it being clan based.

I would run RT as a separate event entirely, maybe on a smaller scale. If it became popular, it could replace the MD one. Ideally, I think it would be great to have a RT event in the current CL format along with a MD ladder for clans. Then you have a round robin type measurement and an ongoing ladder type measurement.


Personally, I loved playing real time EU 3v3 back in the day. It is a better experience IMO and forces you to be on your toes in the moment.

I don't play much RT now because of my busy life. However, IF the games were at the right time, I would gladly do it this way. The trouble is my window for playing is probably about 10 pm Denver time or later mostly.

Edited 1/25/2019 18:07:36

@Platinum: I disagree. RT League administration isn't more difficult than MD League admin imo. This'll be pretty apparent once we test things out. What changes mainly is CL Leader administration. The league isn't going to be responsible for the clans to have players that make it to the game on time. So that means the clans have to present their rosters and backups, as well as ensure players make it to the event on time.. etc. etc.

If anything I think League Admin side is going to be a bit easier. All I gotta do is be like: Hey this is when this is happening. Give me your roster before the event starts.

Then I create the event and if the roster doesn't show it's a forfeit. I can have several people make the games so long as we have the same template. It doesn't really matter. Could also probably use a CLOT or some creative ideas.

Clan Leaders will get destroyed.

Edit: If anyone wants to organize the test run we can have a chat and create a planner, start working on a spreadsheet. I don't have time to host but I can totally lay out how I think it should go.

Otherwise wait until I've got time sometime this summer.

Edited 1/26/2019 05:12:38

Due to time zones, work, and other factors I find it hard to imagine this working out as intended, especially considering that the majority of competitive players from what I've seen mainly play MD. I'd imagine (unless I'm somehow understanding this wrong) that there would wind up being a lot of boots and no-shows. Plus I also think many clans would have to critically re-evaluate their rosters and many would have to drop out due to not having enough players who could reliable participate.

That's just my opinion as an ignorant onlookerthough. :)

@Kayleigh:

I mean I wouldn't be asking for your opinion unless I valued it. The main problem I was having with people that had dissenting opinions is that they tended to believe that either: A. The administration side would be way too difficult, or B. They assume too many things about the format that just aren't practicable so we won't be doing it anyways (ie: hosting an entire tournament on 1 day, keeping a tournament cap instead of switching to a total game cap)

Those dissenting opinions are really easy to convince, so I lack solid dissenting arguments.

You're absolutely right that this could create a new problem of no-shows. This is why overall I would pitch this:

Either CL moves to a hybrid of RT/MD games OR CL makes Div A/B have only 5 clans each from now on and ONLY Div A/B would play on the new RT format.

I think overall you're right that clans will develop new problems in organizing their clan to have players show up at the correct time. I believe due to how competitive the top 10 clans in CL have become that they are organized enough to play in an RT format. I think clans that already have problems with booting in MD are likely to have problems with no-shows in RT. However the difference becomes that most clans struggle within the game in regards to booting. Meaning most clans are organized enough to try to swap out players who can't complete an MD tournament. That's all I can talk about in regards to empirical data.

This part of my argument is going to be completely opinionated. I played in Div A for 4 seasons in a row with Apex and won 3 of those seasons. I, personally, did not have a problem with booting in CL. What I find is that there's a couple factors that drive boots to be more common in CL than in other formats.

1. CL is pretty damn competitive. Every 3v3 EU game that I've played in CL wasn't a walk in the park. It wasn't we locked in picks and won purely off of picks except maybe like once or twice. This drives a lot of conversation to occur in every game if possible. We'd talk, show potential moves, talk some more, show moves again.. and my team consisted of myself (from Texas), grona (from France), and brisk (from Israel). We were very rarely all 3 on at the same time. What I'm getting at here is that the game going until about 2days 20 hours each turn was common. Not because we weren't communicating and were putting things off, but because we were probably communicating too much. Ultimately what I'm getting at is that because turns were drawn out to that point the chances of someone having something come up and not being able to issue orders in time went up also.

2. CL is a long commitment. MD tournaments don't normally last for 6+ months. This ultimately draws people into periods where they use vacations which then extends the season more.. and it's just not fair imo. I've had a game in which the last turn was almost 2 months ago maybe even longer and we had to spend a couple hours reviewing the game just to make sure we were clear about what intel we had. This isn't really fair to either side.

And then about Timezones, Work, etc. There is no perfect schedule. It doesn't exist. Warzone is a hobby/game so if people can make time for it they will. I've played a bunch of online games that have an international audience that required me to coordinate things with people from East Asia/Australia so I already know how difficult that can be. This is why we're going to set specific times on weekends for games that shouldn't go past 1 hour. If this is an impossible commitment for some then I apologize, but I don't see how it is impossible for the majority of people. If you work weekends then tell your supervisor that Kenny tells them to fuck right off.

It's a reasonable idea Kenny and I encourage you to give it a try. But I think you are expecting a bit too much maybe. I won't speak for everyone but I know some clans might run into bigger issues with fielding players for scheduled RT games on weekends. Not only due to the time zone problematic but also due to certain players prioritizing spending time with their kids and family on the weekends. The number of players that are less active on weekends than during the week might be higher than you think. Organizing will be tough for clans since those players will say: "Yeah, I might be able to play but I can't guarantuee." How are you supposed to deal with a 50% chance of someone not showing up?

The only thing that the league admin could do on their side to make it easier for you is to schedule these events 1-2 months in advance so you have as much time to organize people for events. Given that I still would anticipate the season to last 5 months at least (I haven't checked to see how long it would take) this means you potentially have 7 months to organize someone for the last events in the season. I think that's as reasonable as it gets. I agree that people are probably not active on WZ in the competitive community during the weekend as they are during the week.. however I think finding time for 30-90minutes during a weekend to play a game is also not unreasonable when you have at minimum 2 months to think about it. Especially for 1v1s since those can be done via app. (2v2s and 3v3s would be more difficult due to communication)

Edited 1/26/2019 19:29:24