Renegade-X Tournament?

[crazfulla]

Has anybody ever considered organising or participating in one? I see a lot of the old C&C games have die hard communities that occasionally hold tournys. The ZH world series is on right now in fact. I reckon it would be exciting stuff to watch some sort of small team contest in RenX, and I think a lot of players would enjoy a little friendly competition without the 30v30 stalemates. It would take a bit of thought as to what settings, maps, rules etc would need to be used to make it as fair and fun as possible. But I think if enough people got behind it, it could work.

What say you?

[Fffreak9999]

We had a mini-competitive season a while back with the Squad Wars.

It proved mildly popular but rather unsuccessful overall.

[Ryz]

 

6 hours ago, Fffreak9999 said:

We had a mini-competitive season a while back with the Squad Wars.

It proved mildly popular but rather unsuccessful overall.

That was also largely cause one team decided to ask the majority of the 'elite' players to join that team. Basically from that point this team became so powerfull that others didn't (care to) play.

Basically it could work IF teams were competative compared to eachother. 

[Fffreak9999]

The only way I can see this working would be a semi-random pool selection for team creation.

Kind of similar to PUGs but not chosen by a commander.

 

[Guest once upon the time]

Short note:
1.Yes, some felt very disadvantaged compared to a certain team. Follow unwillingness to play.
2.Time zones in the small total number of players are a big problem.
Teams had even in the team itself scheduling problems. With the "opponent team" was much harder for the Team captains.
3.The organizers should not play in any case even in a team to grant an objective gameplay (experience). In the Orga team you have no friends in the participating teams

Those were the biggest mistakes in our first RSW, I would personally no longer align was for me a unsatisfied expierence too.

If you want to align an RSW again, really take the 3 points to heart.

The idea is / was good too, unfortunately it was not really happy the first time.

[crazfulla]

6 hours ago, Ryz said:

Basically it could work IF teams were competative compared to eachother. 

Yes that would be important. I remember in the old days there were some team stacked games on the HazTeam server... wasn't really a fair fight.

 

6 hours ago, Fffreak9999 said:

The only way I can see this working would be a semi-random pool selection for team creation.

What exactly is semi random? RNG isn't a perfect system but it is how brackets are drawn up in the RTS tournys.

Example: 

 

6 hours ago, SilentKnight said:

1.Yes, some felt very disadvantaged compared to a certain team.
2.Time zones in the small total number of players are a big problem.
3.The organizers should not play in any case ..(and).. have no friends in the participating team.

1. Even if teams are picked at random, there will probably be some teams that are slightly more skilled than others. People just need to practice and improve. Tournaments don't have rebalances, only rematches if there is a serious issue.

2. I can relate to that, I am in a weird timezone myself (GMT+12). But most people seem to be able to get on for the PUGs so maybe hold them around the same time. 7am UK is about 6-7am here.

3. Yeah absolutely. In the RTS tournaments they are usually organised by a mutual party, like cncreplays or cncnet. They set the rules and ultimately decide who the winner is.

Edited October 15, 2019 by crazfulla

[roweboat]

I'd probably boat myself let's be honest.

[Fffreak9999]

What I mean by semi random is that all players submit an application to join with a minimum of 2 (or 3) roles they intend to play as.

Such as in a similar situation to the PUG:

Offense Infantry

Support Infantry

Base Defense

Vehicle Driver

Commander

 

etc or however someone chooses to divide the categories.

If you choose to do role based selection then you randomly assign the high priority roles into a pool to divide them up and spread evenly between all created teams (depending on player counts) and max player limits. Then you work your way down the higher priority roles until you have balanced (at least on paper) teams.

As was mentioned before some of the main issues in squad wars was the overwhelming strength of one or two teams by having the very best players (who were all friends) join one team.

Or you could do a complete random group selection, where no player knows who their team mates will be till they are drawn.

[euan-missile]

I think the idea is good, but I think ren-x has a current issue with skill pools and how that's divided into teams, it's never an issue with team balance, more an issue with player count at designated times that have equal skillsets. It's always rather unbalanced, some of the best players don't get on til one time and the rest are mediocre who cannot compete to the same levels. And you can only divide a cupcake by so many times before someones going to get nothing.

 I've watched and partook in many smaller community games tournaments, it's always done an amazing job to boost morale of the current playerbase and invite new players in, the problem being these games always tried to focus on the individuals rather than the teams, because tourn teamplay requires balance, cohesion and incredible consistency that's rarely found on smaller player based games.

 

But, from my observation they overcame that shortcoming by setting up Clans, not teams. The difference being that clans aren't rotational with their players, which means each individual clanmate (regardless of skill) has a chance to learn their role, improve and perfect under the guide of the Clans Sergeants, Captains & Generals, without the fear of losing their position, or being swapped to a different place and having to learn all over again.

This is important for spectators too, as they can consistently keep focused on the clan that they abide in, or dislike. (This is starting to sound ironically like unreal tournament) 

I don't know how many people should be in a clan, or how many clans should be created, but as a guide I would say there should be atleast 4 clans, split into 20 players each, so you could have 2 clans (40 players) fighting against eachother in one match. Rotating the other 2 clans as the games progress. 

I personally think these clans need to be NOD/GDI specific too. 

Edited October 16, 2019 by euan-missile

[Ryz]

Ironically that even in 'organised games' balance / stacking is an issue.

Offcourse people want to have a strong team, I totally get that, but it looks like sometimes they forget that too strong teams lead to massive unbalance which let them have a quick win. But in the end even the winners lose because there is nobody to compete against... 

[roweboat]

Neither an easy win or an utter annihilation is any fun >>

[crazfulla]

@euan-missile

Clans are the top tier of competitiveness and having a more "pro" style tournament might detract from the "fun" aspect of it. Plus RenX just doesn't have the number of players to support 20 player teams. You would be lucky to get 20v20 on the weekends for PUGs (and even they can be terribly disorganised).

Also forcing a clan to be restricted to one faction could be seen as a balance issue in itself, depending on the map choice. The other thing we need to consider is how factions will be assigned. Speaking of PUGs we could copy them, toss a coin for the first match in a series then alternate factions thereafter.

@Fffreak9999

I thought of allocating teams based on roles / playstyles. It is a good idea but it would take a lot of work to pull off effectively. And you would have to know which players were "friends" so to avoid inadvertently stacking the teams. RNG has a low chance of stacking teams but you could end up with one that consists entirely of base defenders.

@Ryz

100% agree. It ruins the whole event when people stack teams, but ragequitting changes nothing. People simply need to improve on their own skill and work themselves up to the same level. Even "pros" sometimes make mistakes. I think less experienced players often find it easier to point the finger rather than to learn from their own and capitalise on the opportunity.

Edited October 17, 2019 by crazfulla

[Killertomate]

RenX can be very funny in small games too (at least on some maps).  Why not introduce a second leaderboard for clans/teams for those small (e.g. 5v5) games. I think the actual player base would be big enough to have enough clans/teams to play such small games competitively/just for fun and maybe it would help to increase the player base.

I don’t know how much “work” such a second leaderboard would be (people could post results in this forum e.g.) … but it would be worth a shot imho.

[Xeon Wraith]

As the guy who often ends up balancing the teams for the PUG, I think you're underestimating the skill gap between some players. Just a few skilled players more on one team than the other can very quickly turn a otherwise balanced game into a stomp. The Renegade X playerbase simply isn't large enough to support RNG-based balance.

Probably the easiest way to think about the issue with player balance is with some numbers.

Lets use CS;GO for instance. In CS;GO the highest rank attainable is Global Elite, which corresponds to about 0.7% of the playerbase. The percentage that are actual professionals is much much lower, but regardless, anyone with the Global Elite rank is really fucking good. 

CS;GO has a playerbase of about 600,000 players, so there's around 4,200 Global Elites around. Plenty to run a tournament with a decent amount of them on every team.

Renegade X currently has 384 players on it's leaderboard. Working with the 0.7%, we have 2.69 Global Elite equivalents. Say we round up to 3 players. With 4 teams, we'll still have one team without a GE equivalent. Worse yet, with randomised sorting we are more likely to have 2 GE equivalents on one team than not. With such a small playerbase, that's easily enough to swing balance to one team than the rest.

 

An unfortunate side effect of low sample sizes. That's just mathematics and statistics.

 

Edit: I'm happy to help out with balancing teams for this if you need it. 

Edited October 22, 2019 by Xeon Wraith

[JoeBrogan7]

On 10/16/2019 at 8:41 PM, crazfulla said:

@Ryz

100% agree. It ruins the whole event when people stack teams, but ragequitting changes nothing. People simply need to improve on their own skill and work themselves up to the same level. Even "pros" sometimes make mistakes. I think less experienced players often find it easier to point the finger rather than to learn from their own and capitalise on the opportunity.

The "just get better" or "try harder" argument doesn't really hold up, especially in the context of Xeon's post. There will always be elite players. They are considered elite precisely because they're playing at a level that is simply unattainable for most others. If it were only a matter of trying harder or practicing more, there would be a heck of a lot more elite players, which means they wouldn't be considered elite in the first place.

[crazfulla]

 

 

8 hours ago, Xeon Wraith said:

As the guy who often ends up balancing the teams for the PUG, I think you're underestimating the skill gap between some players. Just a few skilled players more on one team than the other can very quickly turn a otherwise balanced game into a stomp. The Renegade X playerbase simply isn't large enough to support RNG-based balance.

Probably the easiest way to think about the issue with player balance is with some numbers.

Lets use CS;GO for instance. In CS;GO the highest rank attainable is Global Elite, which corresponds to about 0.7% of the playerbase. The percentage that are actual professionals is much much lower, but regardless, anyone with the Global Elite rank is really fucking good. 

CS;GO has a playerbase of about 600,000 players, so there's around 4,200 Global Elites around. Plenty to run a tournament with a decent amount of them on every team.

Renegade X currently has 384 players on it's leaderboard. Working with the 0.7%, we have 2.69 Global Elite equivalents. Say we round up to 3 players. With 4 teams, we'll still have one team without a GE equivalent. Worse yet, with randomised sorting we are more likely to have 2 GE equivalents on one team than not. With such a small playerbase, that's easily enough to swing balance to one team than the rest.

 

An unfortunate side effect of low sample sizes. That's just mathematics and statistics.

 

Edit: I'm happy to help out with balancing teams for this if you need it. 

CS:GO is not a game I was ever interested in... so I can't really draw much of a comparison. RenX may have less players but I'm not talking about a pro tournament. Those things can bring out the worst in people. This is a close knit community who play more for fun, so although a tournament would be a step up from the PUGs, it will still likely be a far cry from pro league.

 

7 hours ago, ps212 said:

The "just get better" or "try harder" argument doesn't really hold up, especially in the context of Xeon's post. There will always be elite players. They are considered elite precisely because they're playing at a level that is simply unattainable for most others. If it were only a matter of trying harder or practicing more, there would be a heck of a lot more elite players, which means they wouldn't be considered elite in the first place.

That isn't what I said. There is always room for improvement, even at the top level. As I said, everyone makes mistakes. In the Zero hour world series recently, a player that seems to be considered the equivelent of "global elite" was knocked out in round one. My final point was that people lack the ability to self scrutinise. Without that ability, then no, they will never attain a higher level of skill.

[JoeBrogan7]

11 hours ago, crazfulla said:

That isn't what I said. There is always room for improvement, even at the top level. As I said, everyone makes mistakes. In the Zero hour world series recently, a player that seems to be considered the equivelent of "global elite" was knocked out in round one. My final point was that people lack the ability to self scrutinise. Without that ability, then no, they will never attain a higher level of skill.

But it is. You said "It ruins the whole event when people stack teams, but ragequitting changes nothing. People simply need to improve on their own skill and work themselves up to the same level."

In the context of a RenX tournament, it is unrealistic to expect players to simply improve their own skill so that they stack up comparably to an elite player. It's never going to happen. So my point is (again, in the context of a RenX tournament) we would need to go with Xeon's approach of manually balancing teams/elite players rather than RNG method.