Ladders: Limited roster sizes for Vengeance.

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Special
04-27-2003, 19:20
I'm sure most of us are familiar with this scenario: A huge team whose players must wrestle for a starting position. Half the team sits for a match because they have so many players. Or maybe there's a team that soaks up all the available talent. There are even cases where it's a combination of the two, perpetuating a snowball effect.

I propose a discussion on the pros and cons behind a cap on roster sizes. Here are the benefits I see in such an endeavour:

Less players on a team means more competition.
Let's say teamsizes for Vengeance is around 10-12. I would forsee a roster size of 150% of the required team size, so a roster would be limited to 15-18 players. This would allow enough players to account for anybody being absent having to miss matches. What effect does a smaller, limited team size do? It would force team managers/leaders to choose their team wisely. You cannot simply add players to your roster blindly. Having less players on a team also creates the opportunity for the ladder to have more teams to compete. This, to me, is exciting. Imagine a gaming league/ladder that is extremely active due to the number of teams present. You won't have lumbering behemoths of teams with huge rosters that soak up all the talent.

Dilution of talent.
Limited roster sizes addresses another issue. If you have a top team that is consistently at the top, most likely talented players from other teams will flock to the top team. If there is no limit on how many can be on a team, this can be a problem, as the it would soak up talent like a sponge. This would also put a damper on the dynasties of dominating teams. What would have happened to 5150 in T2 if they could not have a roster of nearly 30 people? Some of them would have had to go to other teams. That is interesting in itself.

Healthy rosters.
I'm sure you know what I'm talking about, teams with players that probably haven't played since they were added to the team. By imposing a player cap, the team's leader suddenly has to manage his roster well. This creates a healthy atmosphere for a team, where all the players are active and are willing to play. ADDITIONALLY, it creates more incentive for the players to play, because they want to stay on that team. This is good for competition.

Team growth.
In this situation a team can only grow in a good way. With leaders realizing they cannot blindly add people to a roster, and the fact that it would be harder for a player to get into a roster, a team will grow in the positive direction. It will be more of a benefit to a player that he practices and maintains a respectful demeanor than somebody who is good, and just is an ass all the time.

I'd love to hear some ideas concerning this idea. I'm mainly interested in the cons, because I know they are out there, and everybody thinks differently.

RenGen
04-27-2003, 19:23
We've been discussing this in #ie, and we're well aware that this requires a strong lot of teams that want to be competitive in order for it to have any effect or prove useful. To that effect, please don't post making that point. We're assuming that there would be a solid group of competitive teams as a given. :O

blackpeople
04-27-2003, 19:25
I concur, but I dont see how someone's skill, and dedication on a team has anything to do with how he acts or whatever in a video game.

Doaln
04-27-2003, 19:25
One of the cons I mentioned before was that some teams just like being bigger.

They may not be as competitive, but they have a larger circle of friends or whatnot.

Some people would just be unhappy with the cap, but they would just have to deal with it I suppose. :shrug:

Special
04-27-2003, 19:26
I concur, but I dont see how someone's skill, and dedication on a team has anything to do with how he acts or whatever in a video game.

Because in some teams, some players are just a pain to deal with. They tend to talk back to leaders, some being primadonnas who don't want to listen. I'm referring to those types of players, ones who have lots of talent, but aren't necessarily easy to work with team-wise.

blackpeople
04-27-2003, 19:28
Oh, I see, but if that were the case, then theyd be gone, or wouldnt even make the team. vgd.

Special
04-27-2003, 19:31
Oh, I see, but if that were the case, then theyd be gone, or wouldnt even make the team. vgd.

Not necessarily. If there is a team that is competitive, it wouldn't hurt to have this primadonna individual on the roster, right? For all you know he might be useful in-game.

blackpeople
04-27-2003, 19:32
Thats what i sorta meant in my first response. ;]

But i do think smaller roster sizes would be better, say about to 16 or so, so there is more teams on a competitive ladder, but the team(s) are able to handle players not able to show up sometimes.

Special
04-27-2003, 19:38
Right.

KineticPoet had a really interesting idea for a league/ladder hybrid. I want him to post something about it :O

Sir Lucius
04-27-2003, 19:42
If t3 competetion is going to be really serious, then I can see why you would want serious teams.

The problem is roster caps are good for the top of the ladder and bad for the bottom.


I think if you want the best of both worlds you should implement an invitational ladder (we'll call them regular ladder: TVCtf, and then invite ladder: TVCtf_S).

The invite ladder would have 25 teams (just making up numbers for now, but in the past we've always reguarded the top 20 as the "best" the 5 extra I'll get to in a sec. All this depends on ladder sizes too, if too many or too little people sign up you make adjustments, but for now 25 is nice and round). Then the top 5 of the regualr ladder, and the bottom five of invite ladder are in swap positions. Every 2 weeks the bottom of TVCTF_S are moved to the top of TVCTF and the top of TVCtf are moved to the bottom of TVCtf_S. However, let's say team 1 on TVCtf doesn't want to advance to TVCtf_S, then they can choose to stay, and rung 6 gets the invite instead.

It should be intersting seeing the invite ladder getting new teams every 2 weeks. It will also add the benifits from a roster cap. Best of both worlds in my opinion.

TeckMan
04-27-2003, 22:08
Very good idea Lucius.
There was a discussion similar to this on the TWL T2 boards. The idea was the top 10 teams (t2 only has a competitive top 10) would have a roster cap of ~20. The problem is teams that suddenly break into the top 10 having to drop many members. This way there would be a more formal transition into the top 25 and teams could clean house beforehand. Competition-minded teams would probably keep their rosters trim anyways so they could go Invite easier.

Sir Lucius
04-27-2003, 22:11
Ya, I stole the idea from the tr2 league.


Although I am pretty curious as to what this aformentioned idea that KP has for a league/ladder hybrid.


What I like best about this topic is it's something where players are 100% in control. It's nice knowing that :)

Colosus
04-27-2003, 23:57
What if you had a ladder that had normal competitive play, but then the top 16 teams were locked and while the teams <16 continued ladder positioning, the top 16 were put into a double elimination tournament style for prizes and new ladder positions?

:-D

/me whistles innocently.

Special
04-28-2003, 00:04
What if you had a ladder that had normal competitive play, but then the top 16 teams were locked and while the teams <16 continued ladder positioning, the top 16 were put into a double elimination tournament style for prizes and new ladder positions?

:-D

/me whistles innocently.

What does this have to do with limiting roster sizes? :) I do like the idea of a tournament of sorts. I even like the idea of having seasons of play.

Sir Lucius
04-28-2003, 00:04
How do <16 advance?

Also, col, I can already see this heppen (time out: not saying it's a bad idea, it's a GOOD idea and you're sexy! It's just I like arguments, debates, in deapth discussion, and drama -- so I'll bring it up) As I was saying, I can already see something like this happening: Top 16 goes to tourney...


wait, how does this limit roster sizes?

Ok you caught me off gaurd, but I'm hitting reply anyways.

Colosus
04-28-2003, 00:07
Keep posting on it. Since when can't multiple ideas be discussed in the same thread?

Sir Lucius
04-28-2003, 00:21
ok....when have tournaments ever worked?

The only place I can think of where they went somewhat smoothly are at lan parties.

Problem with ladder tournies -- we have a top team that everyone always knows will win. A domination of sorts. Weather they play in a tourney or ladder won't effect the outcome, they'll win no matter what.

I think THAT's what special's post was talking about. If you have limited roster sizes then all the talent doesn't stack itself on one team. I'll say that granted there's a lot of talent, and much of it is the team leadership and dedication.

I don't want to dictate what teams should be doing or anything, but would you rather watch a tourney of 30 5150 players on the #1 rung, with zero loses, or 2 5150 teams fighting it out?

There are so many things to take into consideration so it's hard. One being that TV is going to have EVERYONE in the community playing. I'd like to be pretty sure of this so I'll just assume I am. But the goal in mind is that all the t2 players, and all the t1 players will come together and play this game. And then all the newbloods from other games will come and play too. That's the vision. I hope that's what everyone else is seeing too. And I don't want to sound like an ass or anything, too late so doesn't matter, but if t1 vets see 5150 and IE players on the ladder, they're going to want to join as well. And if we see Panama Jack on the ladder then we're going to see his V2 crew along as well. And the same goes for the people playing classic (I guess rapture was the top tribe?) so everyone from there will flock to TV. Ok, now the communities are united -- chances are much smaller that you'll have one team domination.

But still, it will evolve to 1 team domination after a time. The top TV tribe will recruit the best players and once again you'll be making the tourney futile.

Colosus, this is hard to discuss b/c it's 2 threads in one, but I tired to intigrate the points.

I guess I'll say you won't have unpredictable an tourney without salary caps -- I mean roster caps.

Colosus
04-28-2003, 00:30
The problem I see with roster caps is that it takes the "fun" away from the game and turns it into a profession. People play on ladders to take their fun to the next level, but there are still multiple levels on the ladder. Those that play to win and those that play to have organized fun. Those teams that just play for fun may be a bit upset at a roster cap due to the fact that they don't have the highly dedicated people to field a 10 man team out of only 15 players. It may require them 24 players to do that same thing.

So my question really is, how do you allow for all players to compete without alienating those that wish to play for fun and those that wish to play to win?

Two ladders was a mentioned solution, but that just degredates the ladder, which was the whole reason this thread was posted. So, how do we come up with a solution to fit all problems?

As for the tournament, you are correct, however it is that rare occassion when some people do play differently in a tournament setting. I find tournaments a bit more fun just do to the fact that there is an ending. It is not an ever increasing process to get the top rung and then hold it. That gets stale very quickly. The tournament style also allows for a double elimination and a seeded setup. Thereby making the final rounds the most hard fought.

I don't agree that we will see only 1 team dominating in T:V. We really only saw that occurrance at the latter part of the T1 age and all through T2 due to the quality of the teams and number of players. Even at the beginning of T2, we saw many more teams truly fighting for the top rungs, not just a single team dominating.

I guess it really is just a "wait and see" kind of thing, but we can try to make plans now and hope they come to fruition.

Sir Lucius
04-28-2003, 00:48
I still like my idea for the invite ladder, but I suppose a tourney can still be cool.

One problem is the tourney is still redundent. Basically everyone in the top 16 does nothing but defend against anyone not in tourney seats. Does the number 1 position still matter? If it's all just a competetion to get in the tournament then the number 1 rung is NEVER going to be challenged by anyone not in the top 16. And people at the bottom of the top 16 will be constantly be challenging up to cockblock people from stealing their position then?

Eh...maybe not. That really is just a worst case scenario, and that depends on people caring more about rank than they do about playing.

Colosus
04-28-2003, 00:54
The tournament would only be done twice a year (or something similar). So the ladder would still go on as normal for a majority of the year, but then a one month hiatus would be done in order to play a tournament. The tournament winners would be ranked according to their position in the tournament (so they would still be moving within their 16 team position) and the number 1 spot may or may have not changed.

The ladder then continues as normal for another 5 months. As for you cockblocking problem, the top 16 on any ladder very rarely changes. Unless some smurf team comes along. So this issue of >16 always challenging up won't matter because it is always done anyway.