Here's something that came to my mind: Having a tournament of parallel-running FFA's, but where in the consecutive rounds the winners are replaced. You can see it as a version of the round-robin system.

So say you've got a template for a 4FFA, and 16 players (call them 1-16). That makes four games. Call them types U, X, Y, Z.

Say in the first round, (1-4) are playing against each other. Call their game U1. And (5-8) are in X1. And so forth, as shown below:

U1: 1,2,3,4*
X1: 5,6,7,8*
Y1: 9,10,11,12*
Z1: 13,14,15,16*

Assume that *'s designate the winners of the first round. Then, in the second round, they replace each other: Each goes to the consecutive game of next type, and the winner of Z1 is gonna play against the losers of U1. So, what we now have is the four new games below:

U2: 16,1,2,3**
X2: 4,5**,6,7
Y2: 8,9,10**,11
Z2: 12,13**,14,15

This time the winners are designated with **. Then again they switch places in the third round, to make:

U3: 13,16***,1,2
X3: 3,4,6,7***
Y3: 5***,8,9,11
Z3: 10,12***,14,15

And then a new round begins, blabla. It goes like this either until a predetermined number of rounds pass or when one player wins a certain number of games.

The player with the most wins is the champion. In case there are two of them, the one with the less losses is the champion.

How does this sound?
And more importantly, I'd like to ask if this can be coded/implemented.

From a coding standpoint, it can certainly be done. You'd have to wait for all 4 games in a round to finish though. I'm not exactly understanding why you'd want to form matchups that way though. You are basically demoting the winner of a game with this method. I would think you'd want to do the opposite (winner moves up) in order to do some sort of promotion type CLOT.

I'm also not sure the benefit in doing this coding. It isn't a great deal of work to simply make the matchups manually...unless these are RT games (then they'd be so often you don't want to do it manually). But what happens if someone stops playing? That is the hard part about a CLOT. If someone leaves it, now you have a FFA based on 4 people per game and you are short a person.

I'm not sure this type of FFA clot would work for these reasons. It would only be able to make FFA games based on enough people to fill all slots being not in another game already. So if you have 10 people in the CLOT, and your template is 4 way FFA, 8 will be playing and 2 not. If you are simply doing rankings based on wins and losses, fine...but if you are trying to force manual matchups based on the results, you will have issues with a person leaving the clot (what do you do with that slot now?).

Edited 3/16/2015 21:56:22

Thanks for showing interest to the post, Chris.

I'm not exactly understanding why you'd want to form matchups that way though. You are basically demoting the winner of a game with this method.

This is a quite right concern, but the template I have in mind is not much skill-based so the effect would not be a real demotion (I'd guess). The idea occurred to me when I created this:

https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=8130488

I'm working on a map that is a bit more detailed than skunk's. When I'm done with it, I'll create games with a similar template on that map.

I'm also not sure the benefit in doing this coding. It isn't a great deal of work to simply make the matchups manually..

Again a right point. My original idea was to organize a series of games that'd run in the fashion I explained in the top post. But I'd like everyone to be able to keep track of the progress immediately (without me informing the players about who won which game) - hence I thought a CLOT could be helpful.

But what happens if someone stops playing? That is the hard part about a CLOT

I don't think it'd happen in the circle of friends I've made here.

An alternative idea is to form a clan and arrange the things in the clan forum. And another alternative is to do it without the use of clans, but some blogs etc. No problems there, I could do it. But, after all, I just wondered if CLOT coding could bring some extra benefits to these.

Edited 3/16/2015 22:14:13

So if you have 10 people in the CLOT, and your template is 4 way FFA, 8 will be playing and 2 not.

Am I wrong in thinking that a CLOT can be created with just the right number of players? That is, say, only when you have 16 players you have the CLOT?

Can other players join later and ruin the whole arrangement? Is that possible?

I'm not a big fan of FFAs. But your idea can certainly be implemented. Like Chris mentioned, I think your biggest challenge will be how you deal with players leaving during a tournament.

From a coding standpoint, it should be straightforward to implement what you have in mind.


"""
Again a right point. My original idea was to organize a series of games that'd run in the fashion I explained in the top post. But I'd like everyone to be able to keep track of the progress immediately (without me informing the players about who won which game) - hence I thought a CLOT could be helpful.
"""

- a CLOT would definitely provide you an automated way of keeping score.


If you do try a CLOT and run into any issues, feel free to ask :)


p.s - Sorry I don't know how to italicize font in forums. Can someone show me how to do that?

Of course you would start with ideal number, 16 players in this case. But, you still need to account for the possibility someone drops. You could just not check like most clots do for activity (they usually boot also). But then if someone does have life issues, you will just keep creating games with someone missing.

As long as you deal with that, sure you could program the matchups no problem.

Edited 3/17/2015 05:02:08

Thanks to both of you for giving thought to this :)

(you make italics by writing the text between "i" and "/i", both put in square brackets. basic html stuff.)

ok thanks

I tried it with angular brackets and gave up :P

Edited 3/18/2015 05:34:28