Tribes Leagues

Tribes, and most other computer games, has almost always used a Ladder competition system. TWL has just introduced their power ranking system. There have been occasional (largely unsuccessfully) leagues.

What would it take to have a successful league? How should it be run? What would you want to see?

A couple of real world examples of Leagues:

English Soccer Leagues - There are different divisions, based on team quality. 1st (premier), 2nd, and 3rd divisions. If you win your division you can be moved up to the next higher division. If you loose you can be relegated to the next lower division.

US Baseball Leagues - Again there are different quality based divisions, but the rights to players are owned by the major league teams. Players move up and down thru the divisions, but stay with their organization - So the Dodgers would put new players on one of their Single-A teams (like the Vero Beach Dodgers, or the South Georgia Waves), then they move them up to the Jacksonville Suns in Double-A, then up to the Las Vegas 51s in Triple-A, and finally up to the Majors in LA. Hockey is the only other league that I know of which works at all like this, and it's much less restrictive than Baseball is.

College Basketball - This is an interesting model, because a few hundred teams form small regional leagues which provide them with about 3/4 of their season's schedule. The team is then responsible for scheduling the rest of their games for the season. According to ESPN there are 32 NCAA conferences worthy of tracking. They range from heavyweights like the ACC to minor conferences like the Big Sky. At the end of the year a selection committee picks the best 64 teams (the 65th team thing is a joke) and they have the NCAA tournament. Another committee picks the next best 64 and they have the ACC tournament. Something like this could be an interesting model for a computer game league.

So there's a bunch of option (not all of them, by any means). I have no idea what would work the best, My goal is just to start some conversation.

I think the soccer league example would be the best. Most of us are familiar with the CAL league system that works the same way, and it works. Other leagues like Iron Glove use this too. Teams of x skill face teams of similar skill, so there's no few teams that rape the entire ladder. This keeps things balanced and it keeps competition at a relative high. This also keeps hope alive for teams that are new to competition even after the ladder is established. They don't have to worry about being creamed by the higher-ups; they have alot of expirience to gain before playing with the real deal(the highest division).

OCsACoolGuy said:

...no few teams that rape the entire ladder. ... even after the ladder is established...

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League. League. Not Ladder.

bloops :\

One of my favorite advantage to a league is times are picked for you. No more trying to pick a date that works for both teams. Much easier to just set aside time every Thursday night for example.

the MLB thing would be cool, but it won't happen. There's just not enough players and if there is, it's going to be a bitch to organize them under 1 "franchise"

id prefer to see the soccer league type thing. first season starts off with everyone in one division, then you can divide it up based on the results of that..

While I do play TWL, I also play on the Blood Eagle Mini League, or BEML....granted, there aren't as many teams as on TWL, but all (well msot) of the teams on there are very friendly and a good time is had by all (less of the 'l33t' attitude)

i know a couple guys from beml post here, so i'm sure they can elaborate more



http://www.beml.org/news/

I like the way the english soccer leagues are run....and i think it would be an interesting way to run a t:v league.

Think the best would be the soccer model, possibly modified. The one problem with a league is: Dropouts.

Say you and a few friends form a small casual team and join the league. After a few games a significant fraction of your roster develops RL issues, and the team as a whole can no longer play at a competitive level due to numbers. Not only have you opened a huge hole in the schedule, you've also screwed any team you managed to beat because they have that loss hanging against them, while everyone else you were to face gets a big forfeit win, regardless of weather you would have beaten them or not.

Possibly some combination of the Power Ladder and a League format. Quarterly playoffs in a League style of the top X teams in a Power Ladder?

Dunno about the Beml ladder....I prefer the shit talking and bad attitudes...It does make up for good forum whoring and all.....I sure wish predictit.org was back..I miss the days of massive shit talking,It made for some good reading and flamming....

yeah i mean, i don't mind the shit talking (on an epic scale!), but at the same time, it's also nce to just sit back and chill and shoot the shit with a team YOU JUST SPAAAAANKED ( )

Thrax Panda said:

What would it take to have a successful league?

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Spectators.

In order to justify the time committment and money involved with exploring the game; creating innovative tactics; practice, practice, practice; purchasing top of the line equipment; servers; attending LAN events; there would need to be a source of income for top players.

Generating income requires spectators who pay directly to attend events online or on location, and the almighty advertising dollar which requires (yes, you guessed it) spectators.

Make this game irresistable to spectators and you can use any valid league model to much success.

One of the great things about the NCAA type league is that you can play in a small, more casual division if you want, you still have a chance to win your division, and everybody has the ability to go into the final tournament and be that cindirella team that wins it all (sort of like Villanova).

HTS, no online game no matter how good will have enough dumbasses around to actually pay to watch games online. A small amount of people get suckered into watching say top war3 games online, but key word is small since there's always readily available replays/etc around which serve the exact same purpose for zero cost.

You'll certainly never get enough spectators to give any type of steady meaningful income as well. The simple fact that most people don't like spending money on games, and the fact that lots of demos/shoutcasts/T2TV-like things will be around anyways adds to that fact.

At any rate, any spectator based model would be doomed to failure from day one.

Do it like college football. Play a season, and then let a computer decide who goes to the tribal championship game.

The reason I think this is a good idea is b/c there would be many drama threads complaining about the computer and that would be very interesting to read.

I agree with ZP on that, I can't imagine anyone sitting around and watching a game that they could be playing themselves. The relatively small group of folks who like to watch demos will have them available at any time free of cost, why would they choose to watch it live?

The soccer style league does sound very interesting.

If it was photorealistic they'd watch it.

if we get some of the spectator features I've asked for, they will come. Make it fun. Make it like a night out at the movies. Involve the spectators in the fun at certains times such as half time. I'm not kidding about this. You guys are thinking small. Who wouldn't have wanted to be there first hand for those 5150 matches at the beginning of T2?

You guys need to think about what can be, not what is.

TySoft said:

...why would they choose to watch it live?

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Well watching it live is actually way better than a demo when you actually see something kickass happen, but at any rate i wouldn't pay for it at all. I haven't payed for anything video game related in a while(all my games are hand-me-downs) and i don't think ANYONE would pay a reasonable sum to watch a video game.

Probably not Sir Luc. The ease of playing argument is extremely powerful and is another reason why spectator related things won't work. Anyone with some common knowledge + a reasonable amount of time playing the game can get in pub servers with top players. They may get their asses kicked for the most part, but they can still play in the same game. Wheras, you can't go play pickup games of basketball with Shaq. (Also of course in other real spectator sports, how good you get is clearly limited by physical ability, whereas in video games if you're smart you can reach a high level of skill regardless of your inital ability).