Hey All!

We need to talk about the State of Affairs with Scrum Leagues and Tournaments. I think we need some fresh ideas on how to run scrum tournaments, leagues and challenges to keep them vibrant, fun and intense. We need volunteers willing to help organize and we need to re-energize the whole thing.

The biggest downers to these kinds of things can be: scheduling, arranging servers, dealing with no-shows, dealing with unsportsman-like conduct, too slow of a pace, LAG to name a few.

My personal opinion is that we have made great progress over the years. But vets are getting burnt, leadership is changing and we need some visionaries to step up and share some wisdom. It seems like there must be some better ways to do this. I've got a few ideas I will post later.

Let's throw out a lot if ideas. Clearly we won't be able to do them all, but if we can identify a few unique gems, we can surely implement them.

-Reagent X

Good idea X.

Here's a thought - why not have each team have 8 players. There are 2 matches a week. 3 on 3 and 5 on 5. Each player only plays in one of the matches. This would give teams who are behind more chances to gain points with more matches a week, and it would also allow everyone to play. If someone didn't show up, simply the match goes to 4 on 4.

EACH PERSON ONLY PLAYS IN ONE MATCH PER WEEK

Last edited: Wednesday, July 06, 2005 at 5:06:33 PM

Predetermined times and days I think are a must for all tourneys.

Also rather than starting out with a bracket I suggest an olympic style tourney.

For Instance:

Pool A:
Team1
Team 2
Team 3
Team 4

Pool B:
Team 5
Team 6
Team 7
Team 8

Each team would have to play the other teams in their pool once. The first and second place team from each pool advances to the semifinal bracket. For ties we go with an average of most goals scored to determine advancing teams and seeding in the semifinal round. (A second tie-breaker could be an average of least goals scored against.)

Now for the weird part. The captain of each team ranks the other teams with a score of 1-7. One being the highest and seven being the lowest. We then put the highest rated team and second highest rated team in a separate pool, and so on and so on. The catch, you're not allowed to vote for your own team. Hence your rank will be an average of seven scores.

In theory, people could not say that the brackets or pools are unbalanced.

Just a thought.

P.S. If your team can't get it together and doesn't have enough tanks for the time and day of your predetermined match, tough. You lose. If forfeits cause an unbreakable tie then the two teams involved must play each other.

Last edited: Wednesday, July 06, 2005 at 10:11:57 AM

Sounds like an interesting way to go. It could work.

I like the pool idea and the ranking system alot actually, only problem is the set scheduling date. Despite the convienence that would come with it, it would also exclude many very good players who just can't make the time. I think instead of a set time there should be very strict limits for the time in which your match should be played during the duration of the pool period. Thus the least devoted or the most unreliable teams wouldn't be able to advance to the actual bracket. I also think that the games during the pool period should only consist of one game, not the usual 2-3, which would also help scheduling. And one more thing, instead of a most points scored tiebreaker, which might not be a truly accurate interpretation of a teams strength, you could just use the match between the two teams in question as the tiebreaker. If one of the tied teams had beaten the other tied team during pool play, the victor would move on. If the two teams had tied though, then it would go into most goals scored. I'm definetly diggin' it.

Last edited: Wednesday, July 06, 2005 at 11:07:49 AM

I love all the ideas above EXCEPT playing two days a week, that would be NUTS! :P

@ Reagent X

Is this just limited to Team Scrum, or are you thinking about creating a governing body of some sort for all TT Leagues, BM CTF or Scrum? I would definately support and have lots of input to some sort of "How to run a TT League" document or develop a standard set of rules that can be used.

[edit] I don't beleive a governing body would work.

Last edited: Thursday, July 07, 2005 at 6:55:14 AM

Great ideas! Keep 'em coming.

@Oddball: I was just thinking about Team Scrum (because that's all I have any experience in), but there is a lot of wisdom out there from the other leagues. I'm sure many of the same issues arise in those too. Feel free to chime in with any suggestions on how we can improve things. A governing body is an interesting idea. Not sure it makes sense to have one for all TT leagues, but I hadn't given it much thought...

Keep in mind summer is always a little whacked with peoples schedules.
Vacations, people off their routine, spontaneous happenings lead to more no-shows.
Predetermined times and days are always better.
Less choices, less ways people will flake off.
Captains must rule their teams with a tight rein, keep in touch with members, exact promises or else from their players.
Leadership must rotate to prevent burn-out.
Higher ruling bodies will arouse instant animosity.
So just dont call it that.
still seeing good new players at various times of the day.
we musty keep throwing out the net and scoop them in.
Game on!!!

Yes we need new players!

Appropriate maps. Limit the number of arrows and a size that won't require hours to learn. I'm not sure if the Lonewolf mountain scrum map would be fun even if I did know it.

I totally agree with BC.... :o

@ Baba;

I would guess that 80% of players use aliases at some point, so when you see "good new players", I suspect they are regular players just using an aliases. This is enforced by the fact that the same proportion of "new players" are not showing up in the leagues. Its still all the old players in the leagues, with very few new players showing up.

We need to recruit or leagues will die through attrition.

Too many cooks spoil the.....

What's so difficult about the PS league for instance? I think you should look at these leagues & tournaments etc as independent of each other and run them that way.

Are people spreading themselves to thin trying to participate in or run everything? I've done that before.

Keep it simple.

Tell your friends about the game.

Edit in: In response to Oddballs last remark..Yes thats true, but I always found in the past when we recruited too hard in games we ended up with a lot of drifters sometimes.

Last edited: Friday, July 08, 2005 at 9:33:26 AM

Depends how old you consider "old players." In TS it takes multiple months of playing to really start to get good. I'd consider new players anyone with under a year of experience, in which case there are definetly a few. Of course, being relatively new myself, I can't really be sure who's been playing for a long time... So I could be mistaken.

I'm tired of walking into indie scrum servers and seeing the game get trashed by demo's, chong-types, and n00bies. Every indie game I walk into for the past month has been trashed, usually the scoreboard looks like this (all names used as example):

DEMO (TANTY!!! 0
Chong (Under Alias) 0
ggg 0

And a ton of people that are either really good new players or current players under aliases at 0.

I would love to see an indie scrum league!

Last edited: Sunday, July 10, 2005 at 7:00:00 AM

A long time ago I thought of doing a indie scrum tourney, the 10x10. Ten tanks, ten hours. Heh heh might be fun.