Google Doc's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14YrV1dvVxJ3df5JHy4xZYSmkIFMz6uAOdci1FqY-Orw/edit?usp=sharing

Because forum formatting is too hard

Ultimate Revanchist

Operation Challenge is hosting a live Ultimate Revanchist challenge run on May 4th.

(A challenge run is a combination speed run and objective run.)

What

Operation Challenge is calling for 8 man raid teams to compete to see which team is the best at clearing Veteran Mode Temple of Sacrifice. (VM ToS)

When

The competition will be held May 4th sometime between 12pm and 2pm EST. Exact start time will depend on turn out. I promise to start no earlier than 12pm and end by 3pm EST. There may be at most another hour of results / analysis that would run until 4pm EST but competitors need not be present for that.

Who

All raid teams on all live servers are welcome to apply. If enough players in a particular range of times express interest, a bracket will be constructed for those players.

(The one exception is my raid team as a whole, sorry guys)

How

Starting now and running until April 30th submit your qualification materials, described below, to operation challenge: swtor.operation.challenge@gmail.com

========================================================================================

Rules

Team Requirements:

Captain

Teams must have a captain / spokesperson. This will be the person I will interact with during qualification and event.

Captains must have discord and an email address that I can correspond with.

Captains will be responsible for submitting all relevant materials to me.

Captains are encouraged to speak english as I am sadly not fluent in any other language. If you do not then I will do the best I can. Hopefully we will be able to find someone who can assist in communication.

Composition

Team must be comprised of the following class disciplines:

2 Tanks

4 DPS

2 Heals

ALL FIGHTS, NO EXCEPTIONS!!!

Players may not switch characters or disciplines.

Alternates

Team may have up to 2 alternates in the event of a member having technical difficulties.

Alternates who join a team may NOT compete on another team during the competition across all heats.

Alternate must come on the same class and discipline as the member they are replacing.

Stream

This is a live event and as such one team member must stream the teams progress during the competition. A stream is not required for qualification. Acceptable streaming platforms are Twitch, Mixer and Youtube Live. The stream must contain game sounds and the starparse “Personal Stats” overlay clearly visible.

Players Requirements:

Players may qualify on as many teams as they wish but may only compete on one team on May 4th.

Players must run starparse during qualification and competition. http://ixparse.com/

Code of Conduct

Players are expected to follow the same CoC as is required by Bioware to play the game. This includes team names and pictures and how players interact with other competitors. Failure to do so will result in team disqualification.

========================================================================================

Qualification:

Qualification will be used to judge player interested and group teams into heats by operation clear time.

NOTE: Time will be the only factor for heat grouping. Time will NOT be the only factor during competition.

<team name> is your teams name, and no you can not name your team <team name>

• Entries must be a zip file emailed to OC with the file name <team name>_URC_##.zip
  
  • ## is your attempt number. Your first attempt would be 01.
    
  • If you wish to submit multiple attempts, I will use the highest attempt number received.
    

  [*]The zip file MUST contain:

  • A text file named: <team name>_info.txt
    
    • Contents described below

    [*]The unedited combat(s) log of all 8 members of the entire run.

    • If a player DC’s and multiple logs are created, then all logs need to be submitted.

    [*]A screenshot of starparse for each operation boss.

    • <team name>_<boss name>.png

    [*]A 1024x768 team picture in PNG format named <team name>_team_pic.png

    • This will be used to when talking about your team
      
    • If you do not submit a team screen shot I will have to use a blank space
      
    • If the file is not the right format I won’t use it
      
    • If the image is not the right size I will resize it to 1024 x 768 even if that means the screen shot looks bad.
      
    • I am considering some kind of fashion contest during during the competition. If this happens, your photo will be what I use.
      

========================================================================================

Competition Scoring

Kill time will be rounded up to nearest second and point will be rounded down to nearest whole number. In the unlikely event that a Score calculation would result in a negative number it will instead be set to zero. (DT stands for damage taken)

• Malaphar
  
  • Time Score = (100 * (team time - (base time + offset time) ) ) / (offset time) *(-1)
    
  • DT Score = (20 * (team DT - (base DT * 3) ) ) / (base DT * 2) *(-1)
    
  • Death Score = 20 - 10 * # deaths[/indent]
    

  [*]Sword Squadron

  • Time Score = (100 * (team time - (base time + offset time) ) ) / (offset time) *(-1)
    
  • DT Score = (20 * (team DT - (base DT * 3) ) ) / (base DT * 2) *(-1)
    
  • Death Score = 20 - 10 * # deaths
    

  [*]The Underlurker

  • Time Score = (100 * (team time - (base time + offset time) ) ) / (offset time) *(-1)
    
  • DT Score = (20 * (team DT - (base DT * 3) ) ) / (base DT * 2) *(-1)
    
  • Death Score = 20 - 10 * # deaths
    

  [*]Revanite Commanders

  • Time Score = (100 * (team time - (base time + offset time) ) ) / (offset time) *(-1)
    
  • DT Score = (20 * (team DT - (base DT * 3) ) ) / (base DT * 2) *(-1)
    
  • Death Score = 20 - 10 * # deaths
    

  [*]Revan

  • Time Score = (100 * (team time - (base time + offset time) ) ) / (offset time) *(-1)
    
  • DT Score = (20 * (team DT - (base DT * 3) ) ) / (base DT * 2) *(-1)
    
  • Death Score = 20 - 10 * # deaths
    

  [*]Operation Time

  • Time Score = (300 * (team time - (base time + offset time) ) ) / (offset time) *(-1)

   

  [*]Team class diversity

  • 8 unique classes - 200
    
  • 7 unique classes - 150
    
  • 6 unique classes - 100
    
  • 5 unique classes - 50
    
  • 4 or less unique classes - 0
    

   

Special Rulings:

It is possible to kill the Core and remain in combat. The only way to exit combat is stealth out or die. To counter this bug, deaths that occur within 5 sec of the end of combat will not count against a team’s death score.

========================================================================================

Scoring Explanation

Maximum points for Time Score

100 per boss (500 total)

300 for the entire operation (Time I say go to when your team kills core)

Maximum points for Damage Taken Score (DT)

20 per boss (100 total)

Maximum Death Score

20 per boss (100 total)

Maximum Team Class Diversity score

200

Time points possible

800

Objective points possible

400

Total points possible

1200

The math above for Time score and DT score is a remapping of one range of values to another.

For Time Score, the thing to understand is that the team with the fasted kill per boss or the operation as a whole will get the maximum points in that category. The other teams will receive points relative to that kill time. That is where the offset time comes in. As long as a team kills a boss within the offset time they will receive point in the given category. The greater the offset the less a team is penalized for being slower than the fastest team.

Current considerations for time offset are 30s and 60s for individual bosses and 150s and 300s for operation time. Qualification entries will help make the final determination.

The scaling is very similar for damage taken. Damage Taken score is currently working with a 3x offset. This means a team will receive points as long as they take less than 3x the damage taken by the team that takes the least amount of damage.

========================================================================================

Notes

Changes

With the exception of competition breaking issues, no changes to scoring or rules will happen during this event. Feedback could lead to changes in future events.

Entrance Trash

Trash leading upto the first boss will not be considered for qualification or competition. On the day of competition, teams are highly encouraged to show up early and clear out these monsters. The expectation is when the whistle is blown, you are pulling the first boss. That being said, the competition will not wait for a team to begin.

Adds Count

Individual boss times will be from when combat start until all raid team member are out of combat.

Trash and Boss Wipes

Damage taken and deaths to trash have no affect on score. Only time spent, damage taken and deaths occurred during successful boss kills will affect individual boss scores.

========================================================================================

Strategy Decisions

Scaled Points

Most of the points are scaled. The top of the scale is based on the teams competing. The bottom of the scale is based on the top teams performance. It is possible for the top performing team in a category to shut out all other teams. Hopefully the scales will be balanced in such a way that the top team would have to be truly exceptional to lock another team out or vise versa, a team would have to be very careless or make a sizeable error to receive a score of 0.

Damage Taken Example:

The team that takes the least amount of damage in a particular boss fight will receive the full point total for that fight, 20 points. All other teams will receive points based on the damage they took compared to the lead team. If team A was able to kill a boss while only taking 100 damage and team B took 200 damage, then A would receive 20 points while B would only receive 10.

Death Score

Only deaths that occur during a boss kill count against your death score, but all deaths count. If the boss summons adds and you kill the boss but the adds are still alive and you /stuck to end combat, those deaths count against you. The only exception is the one listed for Revan above.

Wipes

Wipes only cost you total time, if a pull is going badly maybe the answer is to /stuck and try again.

========================================================================================

Prizes

Operation Challenge has reached out to Bioware for assistance in prizes. We have yet to receive a response. We will keep you updated.

Contact

Email: swtor.operation.challenge@gmail.com

Discord: https://discord.gg/ze3FZbg

========================================================================================

Example of <team name>_info.txt

Server: <server name>

Captain: <name>

Streamer: <name>

Link: <url to stream>

Tank 1: <name> <class> <discipline>

Tank 2: <name> <class> <discipline>

Heal 1: <name> <class> <discipline>

Heal 2: <name> <class> <discipline>

DPS 1: <name> <class> <discipline>

DPS 2: <name> <class> <discipline>

DPS 3: <name> <class> <discipline>

DPS 4: <name> <class> <discipline>

so many rules. . .

edit2

Congratulations LeyDrewid's! Your thread "Ultimate Revanchist Competition" has been appointed the "Meme thread of the Week" by Dramango Mercenaries! We have reached out to Bioware developers in order to gain some sort of price to celebrate you and your achievement, we have yet to receive a reply.

I think this is a very good concept and would be healthy for the SWTOR community. However, I would consider simplifying the rules. I could be wrong, but the current set up seems very intimidating and may discourage teams from joining. Therefore, I would consider:

-Giving teams a certain amount of time (1-2 weeks, or w/e) to submit their fastest run.

- Still require runs to be streamed.

- Remove log submission requirements

-Remove points from unique classes, deaths, and damage taken.

-Allow players to switch disciplines

Again, I like this idea very much, however, right now, I think the event is too complicated. If the event is purely turned into a speed run without the other random requirements, I think more teams may be interested in competing, and the goal of showing new players how to successfully raid is stil accomplished as teams must still work together to optimize gameplay.

REBOUNDER REBOUNDER REFLECT REBOUNDER REFLECT REFLECT REBOUNDER REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

EEEE

:rak_03::rak_03:

"I have read and understand the terms and conditions"

The last time i saw this many rules i was in a congressional hearing.

@ RikuvonDrake Thanks, glad at least I was good for a laugh. Make sure to tell them I like cartel coins.

@ Pizza_boy

First, thanks for the feed back. It was constructive and allows for a dialog. I am hoping to create a competitive PvE scene.

My first idea was to do a none live event. I really don't like wall clock time being a factor if your going for who is the best. Also there is the internet factor. I would hate for a team to lose because of an untimely disconnect. I went with live because it was easier to run with.

In God we trust, all others must parse. Log submissions are because it's the only tool I have to ensure people are following the rules and kills are legit. I will be the first to admit it's not infallible. The combination of stream and combat log would make it difficult enough to fake that would discourage most from trying. If the only requirement was a stream what would stop me from prerecording a kill then streaming the playback at a faster time? You would notice a playback that was going at 2x but would you notice 1.1?

Is the log submission an issue because people don't want to be judged by their numbers? I know that's a thing and I understand it, but this is a competition. Judgement is kind of a given.

Removing point from everything other than time turns this into a speed run. I just don't equate fastest to best. Speed is definitely a factor but I don't think it is the sole factor. Let's say it was just a second. If you had two teams with the same time how would you break the tie? Damage taken or Deaths might be a good way. Maybe there is another factor you like more. Now consider a 1 second difference between the teams. That factor that was good enough to break a tie is completely irrelevant? If all your concerned with is speed then it makes sense. I am going more for who is best.

Here is the start of the score card (at time of posting it has only Malaphar)

Save a copy for yourself, play with the values. If you find some scenario where you disagree with the team that got the most points, I would like to have that discussion.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1x6BEPEv2OmAO0Im1eu7zO7sxpO5aDhxhzjblqiME6G4/edit#gid=0

The unique class points are 100% predictable. Part of the strategy around team formation will focus on how much a team is willing to give up here. It's there to encourage diversity and hopefully show new raiders that all classes are viable. It averages out to 40 points a boss. It is also still possible to completely class stack your dps and get half the points possible dropping that average to 20 points a boss. If you play with the dummy score card you will see that 20 points is not a lot.

Discipline swapping, so long as player role was preserved, would only affect DPS. I could see opening up that but I opted to lock it down figuring it would add to the strategy. Discipline swapping, so long as group role composition was preserved (2 tanks, 4 dps, 2 heals), would also be interesting but would have a major impact on strategy.

I'm going do to some formatting to the initial post. I have this feeling that people are lumping everything after the word Rules as part of the rules but what I consider the rules to be is pretty short and not that bad. Honestly I figured it was mostly common sense stuff.

I understand your comments about fastest vs best. But in the context of raiding in this game and others, typically fastest is best. World first progression races are about who kills a boss first. They're not about who kills it the most cleanly. Bioware as an added skill test had put in timed run achievements, again encouraging quick clearance. I feel a death is punishing enough and will reflect in the time regardless so why make it subtract further points? A death will lead to some lack of DPS (either through tank dps loss, a dps death, healer dps loss or some sort of overall raid mechanical compensatory requirement for the dead player) which will cause your time to kill to increase. I feel that because player deaths already impact your time, time should then be the focus. Furthermore if your team has the resources to manage it, a death can be a way to deal with mechanics in some cases. If you mismanage your cleansing in phase 1 of revan an effective solution can be for a player to suicide and be revived, this could be considered a skillful recovery yet why punish this level of understanding?

Your DTPS calculation is inherently biased; classes are balanced around different defensive toolkits. A sorc DPS has unnatural preservation, a cooldown which requires you to have taken damage to be effective, a merc and pt have kolto, again a cooldown which will not lower DTPS in any way but will keep you alive. Likewise enraged defence won't help DTPS. Compare this to say a marauder who has damage avoidance tools such as undying, saber ward, force camo etc. All of these listed examples are using their cooldowns in a good way to survive incoming damage yet many of these classes are going to be punished more than others if you're doing a scoring system based on DTPS. Does every team now have to run a sorc healer to spam bubbles to artificially lower DTPS seeing as HPS is not being rewarded anyway? Many of these rules have created an environment which does not reflect real raiding at all and are just weird things to game around in my opinion.

Even your diversity rule is a little odd. If you really think about it; to achieve maximum scoring 2 of your 4 DPS must be occupied by a marauder and sniper (since these classes cannot do any other role). This means that 6 other classes must compete for the remaining 2 DPS spots. This doesn't demonstrate equality of classes to me. A new player could watch this and be lead to believe they should just play marauder or sniper if they're interested in DPS since these will obviously be the most prevalent DPS classes if a group is aiming for all 8 classes present.

I also can't see a scenario where someone pre-records and plays back a VOD. To quote you, "The expectation is when the whistle is blown, you are pulling the first boss. That being said, the competition will not wait for a team to begin." This means it is near impossible for a team to guess the exact minute the competition starts. Just enforce streams show the in-game clock and you can verify that they are indeed running live. Heck if you're really suspicious about any result just enforce that streamer to do something that they could not pre-record the moment they kill Revan (eg. type a specified phrase in chat and just don't release said phrase until a few minutes before the event starts.)

Make it simple; everyone starts at the same time, first to clear the final boss wins. The class diversity stuff and enforcing 2 tank 4 dps 2 healer is fine.

@ That_epic_guy The world first progression and timed achievements are centered around time. So ignoring all other factors makes sense. I am definitely attempt the impossible. I am trying to establish, with the help of the community, a set measurements for determining best. Ideally a generic template, not one that only applies to ToS. There are a number of good conversations starting to flesh that out. In the end I am sure I won't be able to make most people completely happy, but maybe we can make most people happy enough.

One of the reasons I separated damage taken and deaths is because I wanted recognize that a team can use deaths to manipulate fight mechanics. I know mistakes happen but the best teams are more likely to have deaths to manipulate the fight. For example Xenoanalyst from the Gree event, you can improve your up time by ignoring the Power Core during the Environmental Awareness phase. All it costs you is a tank. By having the Death score I've created a strategic point. Skip the core for a quicker kill but take a death.

Someone else talked about recovering from "disaster" as means of displaying skill, that is a valid point. A counter point would be that another measure of skill is to never enter the "disaster" state. Maybe a good compromise is to allow 1 death per boss.

I am evaluating individual bosses in addition to the op as a whole. I'm basing time on start of combat to end of combat. Since the first 4 all have adds that could affect end of combat, there is another point of strategy. Kill the adds or stuck to speed up end of combat or bring an all stealth comp.

Your DTPS points are very interesting. If every group ran the same comp then a flat analysis would be a fair comparison. The reason for not mandating group comp is to allow for teams to make strategic decisions. So we could chalk up the differences to being part of the strategy and hope the diversity bonus is enough to compensate for sub optimal choices. Since DT Score is suppose to reward players who know how to manage DCDs, perhaps it would be better to further complicate complicate the measurement and refund effective self heals. This could possibly just shift the imbalance to snipers and sins.

Your point about sage/sorc healer bubbles is also a good point. But maybe is a self balancing one. If the sage/sorc healer spends all their GCDs keeping bubbles up then they aren't putting GCDs into damaging the boss. I've also hear that of the 3 healers their damage is the weakest, I don't know I'm not a healer main, so maybe this is a way for them to be viable.

I chose to not reward HPS because I felt like that would encourage players to intentionally take damage. While it might be interesting to do an event in the future that flips the rules so healers can show off their stuff, as a standard measurement it didn't make sense to me.

Your assessment of the diversity rule is an amazing point. I completely overlooked that it locked two of the spots. Perhaps the better solution is to adjust the range from 4 - 8 to 3 - 7. I am not likely to change scoring after the announcement as there might be teams that have build their strategy around 8 unique. I definitely see this changing for the next event. Another possible fix would be a unique score per role, like 25 points per unique class in each role. This keeps the possible points at 200, while not forcing some roles to take certain classes. Those poor PT tanks and merc healers.

With regards to starting and ending in special ways to avoid a playback, I am guessing you also have reservation about handing over a combat log? If you don't mind answering, why are you reluctant to hand over a log? Or anyone for that matter? For me it's a non issue. I understand that some don't like sharing that kind of info because they feel they will be judged. But this is a competition, it's all about judging.

Also at some point I'd like to run an event that wasn't live. More like what Pizza_boy was talking about. Give teams a chance to put forth their very best attempt.

I know starting and stopping a clock would be simpler. I'm just trying for something better. I am hoping we the community can come up with something that make sense.

I think the other thing to remember is 20 points is about 6 seconds if the time offset is 30s. So a team can ignore deaths and damage taken if they are more than 12 seconds faster than in a given boss fight.

Before I get into what all I have to say on this, I do want to say that I absolutely love this idea. I remember fondly what I consider to be the hay days of competitive raiding in SWTOR. For me, that would be around the time DF/DP were introduced leading up through Rav/ToS, and quickly died out after that. My server (a freaking RP server) had dozens of raid teams competing to see who could clear those ops the fastest. Individual players, raid teams, and guilds as a whole received recognition for what they had done. I would love to return to time like that. And this idea I think has the makings of something that could get us back there faster. Please allow me to soapbox a little on the topic of building competitive enterprises from nothing.

For about 10 years, I helped run a small company that built and ran adult flag football leagues around the DFW area. That time taught me many different lessons, not the least of which is how to deal with people who want to change the rules. I spent a significant amount of time dealing with the captains of various teams lobbying for all manner of rule changes. What I found was that these people tended to break down into 3 different categories.

Category 1 are a specific group of people who tend to not want rules/labels/borders/restrictions of any kind. Virtually any rule that was brought up to curb a particular problem that had arisen was derided by them. These were the "let the guys play" crowd. They were overwhelmingly the crowd that tried to bend the rules or outright cheat. Many of the rules that were being introduced were to alleviate a problem they created. They didn't understand, or care to understand that those rules had specific purposes. Over time, I learned to ignore this crowd entirely. They sign up and play either way, they just wanna complain when they don't/can't win.

Category 2 are a specific group of people who I always just referred to as "lazy or reluctant leaders". These people want to play, they don't WANT to put together the team, find people, teach the rules, teach the plays, etc., however they haven't been invited on any other teams, so they constantly lobby to simplify the rules with the background motivation being that they want less to have to teach to the people on their team. As someone in the raiding community, I'm sure you understand the the majority of any raid team doesn't worry about the whole picture, they only concern themselves with their job. They aren't watching the forums for new strats, in all the right discords learning about new gearing or rotations. Usually for any given team, that's one guy, maybe two. Flag football was no different. And if that guy is only filling that roles because he has to (nature abhors a vacuum), he will want that job to be as easy as possible. You can't ignore these people entirely. They will make up the majority of your raid teams that enter. If you make the responsibility list too long, or too complex they will stop participating because it's too much work. You have to listen to these guys and help them where you can without letting them run the league because they are the loudest.

Category 3 are a specific group of people I call the "manipulators". These people have an agenda when they angle for rules changes, and that agenda is always to help them win easier. So the hyper athletic teams would angle for rule changes that would emphasize speed and agility over football skill, and the football skill people would argue the other way. A good swtor analogy I can give for this is an old team that used to be very successful on my old server. They had two tanks that were like a 7/10, and two healers that were like a 6.5/10, and 4 DPS that were like a 15/10. Absolutely god-tier DPS. The just brute forced everything, kill everything before mechanics happen. So they would likely be in here angling for the removal of the DTPS and Death scoring because for them people died all the time and stood in every circle as long as it meant they could squeeze out 1% more DPS. They would absolutely want it to be a pure race to see who finishes first, with nothing else effecting the final result. You can't just flat out ignore these guys, but if you think about the rule changes they are angling for and determine that they would benefit them greatly while directly harming teams that go about it another way, ignore them and move on. Real quick, I'm not at all accusing the Failure guys in here angling for that rule change of being in this category, I don't know any of you, this was just the best example I could come up with. Besides, ya'lls teams are like 15/10 for all 8 players.

Across 10 years of doing this in many many different leagues I tried lots of things to figure out what worked the best for establishing a long-lived competitive and fair environment. If you let category 1 run the house, it devolves into something that doesn't resemble the original game, with cheating and rule bending being the norm rather than the exceptions. Category 2 running everything totally weeds out everyone who is highly skilled. I never did figure out why, but in the leagues where I let that group of people have the most influence on the rules, the quality of the play devolved significantly and the top teams just stopped showing up. Too easy I guess. And category 3 leads to very very few teams showing up because the rules are slanted so heavily that only a small handful of teams can even compete. Most of those leagues ended up being 3-5 of the same teams coming back year after year. The best results were the leagues where I decided the rules, and always made sure that those rule decisions were based on the health of the league, not any individual player or team. I took the underlying motivations of people with rule suggestions to heart, and decided from there.

All that being said, I agree with others that the DTPS grading system is a little silly and will lead to unfair results, but the rest is at least reasonable if not, necessary. Anything you can come up with that will make it easier for people to post/upload their results would go a long way as well. In the time since I've started competitive raiding I've had a kid, gotten married, moved twice, went from part time to full time to heavy overtime work, and I suspect many others are in the same boat. Where you can save us time, you should, it will keep us coming back.

I'll get off the soapbox now. If you'll excuse me, I've got a tournament raid team to go build.

Before I get into what all I have to say on this, I do want to say that I absolutely love this idea. I remember fondly what I consider to be the hay days of competitive raiding in SWTOR. For me, that would be around the time DF/DP were introduced leading up through Rav/ToS, and quickly died out after that. My server (a freaking RP server) had dozens of raid teams competing to see who could clear those ops the fastest. Individual players, raid teams, and guilds as a whole received recognition for what they had done. I would love to return to time like that. And this idea I think has the makings of something that could get us back there faster. Please allow me to soapbox a little on the topic of building competitive enterprises from nothing.

 

For about 10 years, I helped run a small company that built and ran adult flag football leagues around the DFW area. That time taught me many different lessons, not the least of which is how to deal with people who want to change the rules. I spent a significant amount of time dealing with the captains of various teams lobbying for all manner of rule changes. What I found was that these people tended to break down into 3 different categories.

 

Category 1 are a specific group of people who tend to not want rules/labels/borders/restrictions of any kind. Virtually any rule that was brought up to curb a particular problem that had arisen was derided by them. These were the "let the guys play" crowd. They were overwhelmingly the crowd that tried to bend the rules or outright cheat. Many of the rules that were being introduced were to alleviate a problem they created. They didn't understand, or care to understand that those rules had specific purposes. Over time, I learned to ignore this crowd entirely. They sign up and play either way, they just wanna complain when they don't/can't win.

 

Category 2 are a specific group of people who I always just referred to as "lazy or reluctant leaders". These people want to play, they don't WANT to put together the team, find people, teach the rules, teach the plays, etc., however they haven't been invited on any other teams, so they constantly lobby to simplify the rules with the background motivation being that they want less to have to teach to the people on their team. As someone in the raiding community, I'm sure you understand the the majority of any raid team doesn't worry about the whole picture, they only concern themselves with their job. They aren't watching the forums for new strats, in all the right discords learning about new gearing or rotations. Usually for any given team, that's one guy, maybe two. Flag football was no different. And if that guy is only filling that roles because he has to (nature abhors a vacuum), he will want that job to be as easy as possible. You can't ignore these people entirely. They will make up the majority of your raid teams that enter. If you make the responsibility list too long, or too complex they will stop participating because it's too much work. You have to listen to these guys and help them where you can without letting them run the league because they are the loudest.

 

Category 3 are a specific group of people I call the "manipulators". These people have an agenda when they angle for rules changes, and that agenda is always to help them win easier. So the hyper athletic teams would angle for rule changes that would emphasize speed and agility over football skill, and the football skill people would argue the other way. A good swtor analogy I can give for this is an old team that used to be very successful on my old server. They had two tanks that were like a 7/10, and two healers that were like a 6.5/10, and 4 DPS that were like a 15/10. Absolutely god-tier DPS. The just brute forced everything, kill everything before mechanics happen. So they would likely be in here angling for the removal of the DTPS and Death scoring because for them people died all the time and stood in every circle as long as it meant they could squeeze out 1% more DPS. They would absolutely want it to be a pure race to see who finishes first, with nothing else effecting the final result. You can't just flat out ignore these guys, but if you think about the rule changes they are angling for and determine that they would benefit them greatly while directly harming teams that go about it another way, ignore them and move on. Real quick, I'm not at all accusing the Failure guys in here angling for that rule change of being in this category, I don't know any of you, this was just the best example I could come up with. Besides, ya'lls teams are like 15/10 for all 8 players.

 

Across 10 years of doing this in many many different leagues I tried lots of things to figure out what worked the best for establishing a long-lived competitive and fair environment. If you let category 1 run the house, it devolves into something that doesn't resemble the original game, with cheating and rule bending being the norm rather than the exceptions. Category 2 running everything totally weeds out everyone who is highly skilled. I never did figure out why, but in the leagues where I let that group of people have the most influence on the rules, the quality of the play devolved significantly and the top teams just stopped showing up. Too easy I guess. And category 3 leads to very very few teams showing up because the rules are slanted so heavily that only a small handful of teams can even compete. Most of those leagues ended up being 3-5 of the same teams coming back year after year. The best results were the leagues where I decided the rules, and always made sure that those rule decisions were based on the health of the league, not any individual player or team. I took the underlying motivations of people with rule suggestions to heart, and decided from there.

 

All that being said, I agree with others that the DTPS grading system is a little silly and will lead to unfair results, but the rest is at least reasonable if not, necessary. Anything you can come up with that will make it easier for people to post/upload their results would go a long way as well. In the time since I've started competitive raiding I've had a kid, gotten married, moved twice, went from part time to full time to heavy overtime work, and I suspect many others are in the same boat. Where you can save us time, you should, it will keep us coming back.

 

I'll get off the soapbox now. If you'll excuse me, I've got a tournament raid team to go build.

Very profound insight. I resubbed to the game just to post this because you were so inspirational! I am going to build a team now as well. I hope your team finds victory in this event! You got this! Good luck!

I'll get off the soapbox now. If you'll excuse me, I've got a tournament raid team to go build.

Sorry to interrupt but this post is nearly a year old, and even when it was new it never got off the ground because of how overly complex it was. Not a single team participated, not even the OP's team.

Very profound insight. I resubbed to the game just to post this because you were so inspirational! I am going to build a team now as well. I hope your team finds victory in this event! You got this! Good luck!

Team Shirt 4.0 or Failure Sapphire 3.0?

Sorry to interrupt but this post is nearly a year old, and even when it was new it never got off the ground because of how overly complex it was. Not a single team participated, not even the OP's team.

Offfff course. I didn't even think to look at the dates all this stuff was posted. Well I guess I've made enough a fool of myself today. Pardon me while I go play in traffic.

I'll get off the soapbox now. If you'll excuse me, I've got a tournament raid team to go build.

This thread is ridiculous but your post was a fun read. thank you

Offfff course. I didn't even think to look at the dates all this stuff was posted. Well I guess I've made enough a fool of myself today. Pardon me while I go play in traffic.

I commend your excitement.

NiM Dxun is coming so at least there's that.