Added (2010-07-12, 1:43 Am)
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lol to wait to september is kinda ridiculous you know? I don't wanna play the rest of my OA 2010 just on this tourney organizing matches that keep falling apart and getting rescheduled xD

But, seriously, it's precisely slow to give more time to people BECAUSE they are, as you said, busy. I don't wanted to stress anyone, and give enough time to everyone.

Personnaly, supeR,Bots played with 3 teams by month, and now we already played all our selection matches... I don't see what is so difficult.

I considere that you abandonned this match (CreW vs DP), then we will see in few weeks how things are going for you

Things like the rule "only 4 v 4 regardless if the two teams agree" Only delays the process and slows things down. It should either be YEs its allowed or sorry you lose xD if you dont have 4. I mean the whole process with the point system and the preliminaries is a great idea and the bracket system is cool.... but OA has an unstable community to begin with....if you have this thing spanned out for many months starting with 12 clans....youll wind up started the REAL thing with only 5. It's nothing against you, supeR, or anything like that...it's just DP was excited to get going.....then after registration closed....it took 3 weeks after that to get started....... its just taking..too long xD

False there ARE NA clans, indeed not as much as EU ones but this is mainly due to the fact that statistically (I believe) there are less NA clans, and because they fear that the matchs get unevens and unbalanced, may it be technically or politically.

We are trying our best to avoid those pitfalls, and we even tried to find new innovative technologies to fit all players and fill the gap between EU and US communities, what has never been done before (as you could see, we didn't stick to CPMA just because of its renown, even if I spent more than 1 full month to hack it to our needs).

Indeed, we faced some problems with the US servers, some due to a bad configuration by the host, some due to some bugs in the engine (like a memory leak which is fixed now). Everything should be fixed by this week.

First, this is not only 1 tourney, there are 4 tourneys : Elimination, CTF insta, CTF allweapons and CTF rockets, so this is totally normal that it takes longer than your usual tourney, but I agree it could be shortened.

But don't forget that if it takes so long, it's not because of the organization, but because of players : for example, the deadline was delayed because of studies and the world cup of soccer. Personnally I couldn't care less about soccer, but we have to respect other players lifes.

Lastly, we tried to enforce the dates for the matchs last year for the least league, but in the end, noone could agree and play their match on time. So this time, after some discussions, we agreed to not enforce the dates but provide some guidance and structure so the league continuously run.

In the end, you may or may not agree with the organization, but you CAN'T say it doesn't work and that it's dead.

Now, I don't think the time it takes is a reason why players are not showing, it was happening since the beginning and at a higher rate. I rather think that it's because the dates of all matchs were obscure, and so I added a calendar so people can get a clearer view of the league, and soon I will update the GTV servers so they fully work as intended. This will provide a good basis for external people to access the league.

Rules are less strict than in other competitions because we took in account the maturity of the OA community as a semi-progaming one, and as such, we can't make really strict rules yet, people are not prepared. But the rules that are written are enforced.

Yes, but it's not a reason to avoid starting any initiative. This league is big, yes, but it's an initiative to raise the OA community.

It's just up to you guys to ask to other clans to do your matchs, there's nothing to stop you.

I know that me and Penguin are the 2 most active leaders of this project, but this league is NOT a supeR,Bots project, it was and is still made in collaboration with many other people that have nothing related to supeR,Bots.

It's just that it makes me sad if some people may think that this league is made by the supeR,Bots for the supeR,Bots, because else why would I spend so much time to make an opensource league servers configuration and release it freely to anyone ?

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Anyway I have nothing against you, sorry if I may sound virulent, but my point is that some of your arguments are valid, mostly about the slow launching of the US servers, and they are going to be fixed soon, but about the duration of this league, I think not, because it's only up to you, and any delay was made as an arrangement to the requests of most players.

Just please avoid easy critics, I know that our choices may not always please everyone, but we are always open to new suggestions.

So if you have any realistic suggestion, please feel free.

You can't blame the players for the slow time of this tourney! As organizers you should be strict on many things here! It will get the tourney done and over with so we can all move on. If you leave it up to us nothing will get done because we have no say in how the thing is run!

To start to raise the community.... I've tried so many times to do so...and it boils down to: Clans cannot do it at all. It is up to the ones who run openarena.ws and created OA to promote it etc on the broader community level. All tourneys do is cause competition amongst clans xD

Just my view on this: If you wanted to have the point system for preliminaries....i would have went in order with the gamemodes First CTF the Insta then Rockets then Elim......it just will move faster and the clans will be more focused. I like the points thing its a good idea but it boils down too with the amount of things going on at once, nothing at stake really, short intention spans, and real life calling it'll be christmas time and this thing will still be going on xD

I know you want to have all the clans and have fun...that is the main goal after all! ^.^ But DP is not interested in this at this time.

Take it easy

For me, the main reason the league was a pain is trying to schedule matches with EU teams. I would rather be playing at 10PM central north american time, than at 2PM when all the matches have been scheduled. I would rather be doing things other than playing OA around 2PM on a weekend. I know EU teams wouldn't be able to play early in the morning when it was 10PM here, so the time difference really stinks for scheduling.

Good Luck with the OA-CL.

Bah, you should know me now : I love arguing and reasoning. Why would you be a human if it's for living like a sheep ?

Secundo, arguing is NOT fighting, if that's your vision you should then stop reading this discussion as your mind is stuck in a scheme where changes & mind efforts = bad.

Thirdly, it's not because my words are virulent that I am angry : I am _not_ offending, because I have no bad feelings. Sorry if I don't abuse smileys as I did in the past : my life experiences taught me to not.

Ah, and last, because I like to argue : would you prefer me to ignore you rather than take of my time to write you a thoughtful reply ?

We knew, the EU and US disagreements is one of the challenges of this league. Your complaints are valid here, but our initiative is the first one of this kind for OpenArena, I know it ain't perfect, but we don't yet have any other solution, and you guys just complaint without proposing anything.

Sorry for the misunderstanding, it's my fault : the league was delayed solely because of the school end of year's tests, we didn't plan the soccer but it seems that some players took some more time because of the world cup so the delay has been useful for this purpose too, even if not planned for it.

And about school, don't forget that most people had tests during the full month of June, and a little bit of the beginning of July, so yes, the time was maybe not the perfect one to organize a league, but we try to adapt to the major real life situations of the participants.

Well, in fact _you_ are blaming the players by blaming the delay, because our organization is the choice of the community (remember that there were many discussions prior to this event), and as a fact, supeR,Bots already did all (or almost all ?) selection matchs, and since I'm in this clan, I can tell you that we took our time, but it was done in a reasonable schedule, even if there were a few reschedulings and a difficult organization on our side (we are all very busy, me the first).

The thing is : you complain that it's difficult for you to play the matchs at given dates, and you are choosing them ; imagine if we'd enforced the dates for you ?

Lol yes you have ! There were many discussions prior to this league, and another league last year, this one is the result of all these discussions and experiences.

Another thing to take into consideration is that this league is an new kind of league, with an open layout, open technologies (sources to be released soon - at last !), and with no sponsors. There is no possible comparison with QuakeCon or such things, so people have less interest, that's not surprising.

False, a community is not run by the game or the game's author, but the game is run by the community. I agree, any initiative to move people is hard, not only in games, but that's the way it is, and you can't help it. What you are talking about is not a solution : it's an abandon.

Good argument, it would have been useful if you said it prior the beginning of the league, we will take it into consideration for future events.

Actually, the goal is having all the clans having fun XD

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Anyway guys, you are of course free to leave, I'm just interested in your reasons for leaving.

Just one last question : why is the delay of the league a problem for you, since you seemingly are not going to stop playing OA ?

YES! That would have been much better! The tourney would be over with now. Clans that DON'T show up are disqualified and we can all move on with our lives rather then waiting around for months on end.

what initiative is that? There have been many tournies combining EU and NA clans using similar style rules etc )Escaped Turkey being one of them and that one also let q3 clans participate. Honks and Nexus were here for that) Just wondering...maybe i'm not understanding?

I couldn't disagree with you more. You know why the community is stronger in other games that are open source? Because there is a connection between the makers and community. Even Quake Live. If this OACL was even mention on the homepage of the open arena website and had updates on the HOME{AGE of the open arena website...it would be a great start. The Main site needs more community info and activity....not a forums that no one cares about. The OA developers need to appoint someone to have a centralized server and centralized events. This will ensure flawless activity! QUake Live hosts Quake Live Tournements...why cant Open Arena host Open Arena ones? A community IS run by the makers. There are countless amounts of failed projects and tournies run by outside sources and clans..... because there is no suport from the actual game makers or main central communal base. Its the equal to America's Articles of Confederation. No Federal Government at all = Country going no where fast. In this case: No help from a central base = clans trying to drive the community....

Its a problem because this shouldn't take as long as it is. If people have school work and tests that was understandable....that should come first... but have a set date where matches start and get through with em. Not a month or 2 after :0 i mean registration ended in April and this started in like June......all interest was lost by then. When in reality...... it should have been either: Registration ends in April and the tourney ended in June or the Registration ended in June and the toruney ended in August....this is not the case. What we are seeing now are clans scrambling to get matches done....matches being delayed, and an august 2nd deadline....and a september date? The registration was in April!!! We can all be playing the game instead of worrying about organzing matches....thats when school starts back up!

And about suggesting things ahead of time....i couldnt...because i left the game for awhile... I petty much started playing and made dp and signed us up i didnt even get to read the rules. I wish I knew about it because I have many ideas that would get this thing rolling faster and yield the same results!

The only tourney i saw work from start to finsh flawlessly was V's knock out tourney. And the one other then that was the OAC which had its flaws but it finished (many drop outs though)

Added (2010-07-13, 11:36 PM)
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This of course doesn't mean I hate the fact that the tourney is around...or dislike your notions to try and make one. I just feel its taking too long and lack of interest arises when it takes this long. Good luck to the rest of the teams in the tourney!

That is a false assumption based on inexperience : we tried this last year, people cried out, and reschedules were legions. And since it's that much difficult to find a good date for EU vs US match, when you already can try an arrangement by yourselves, when we tried to enforce the dates, it just ended up with people being unsatisfied by the dates anyway.

I can't find any informations about the events organized by Escaped Turkey, but their goal was undoubtedly different than ours : the goal here is to bring competition to a new level in OpenArena, so there's no point to add a compatibility layer for Q3 to let Q3 clans join. We want to promote OA as an entire entity, not as a sibling of Q3.

Here is my vision of the list of the goals of this project (may differ from the original goals, you'd better ask Penguin) :

- Make a league with several gametypes and selection and eliminatory phases, not just a straightforward tourney. There's no other OpenArena event of this scale to my knowledge, but I may be wrong.
- Provide a real support and a real search of solutions for EU vs US matchs (we have EU and US servers, a full delagged technology, we provide complete informations about timezones, etc...)
- Provide all means to secure the league (no specs, system of referees and match mode, GTV with delay, etc...)
- Provide a real organization of a league with a dedicated website, modules (like calendar and soon a place to dl demos), and a dedicated mod and servers config.
- Provide all these work free, opensource so anyone can take inspiration, or even reuse, part or the whole work.
- Based on an open organization scheme : the organizators is not limited to some obscure persons controlling things in the dark who may or may not have interests, but there are people from all sides and new persons may be invited to participate to the organization by a voting system.

There may be other things that I forgot, I'm not really into all the strategies stuffs behind this league except for the technical side. As a summarry, I see this project as an OpenSource League for an OpenSource Game.

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Lol at Quake Live : actually, they have many problems with the community which, amongst other requests, ask for more competitive features (like something similar to CPMA mod) but they get no replies, and that's only an example. Crawl their official forums if you don't believe me.

You are making simple comparisons, without considerating the specificities and the differences of the situations. It's like comparing the political strategy of a country and another one, saying one is better than another.

Secundo, that's false, look to games like Ryzom, or T4C, or Tremulous : the communities did it all, even when the authors dropped _all_ support (not for Tremulous).

And the problem now with OA, is not a dropped support by the authors, they are _actively_ developping and discussing about the future of the game, and some external participants brings some valuable contributions (like Falkland for code infos or Gig for making the Wiki).

No, the problem of OA now is mainly one of communication : noone knows what is OA, and the few ones knowing it by name assume that it's a pale copycat of Quake 3 Arena. No wonder its success stays limited. And OA is an old game (at least the gameplay).

And about centralization, that's not true : look at Linux, and mods, or emule and torrent : they have a decentralized architecture. One can argue longly about which scheme is the best, I think that both are useful, depending on the case. But here, we are talking about the community, and as such, a decentralized approach seems to be the best, like the way mods works : and mods are the pillar of the success of Q3.

Bah, we tried to arrange the most of people, we will see how it ends up. If people at the end disagree with what they asked, we won't follow them on this one the next time

I'm not surprised of your complaint on this point, I'm now used to see people asking for stuffs, and then changing their minds and ending up by being unhappy by how the things ends up.

For example : you are complaining that the league should have been done on a strict schedule, and so it should have been done by now (no delay), the remaining teams without enough matchs being ruled out. That would be your case, you would be ruled out. So you would anyway end up being unhappy.

Maybe for you, because you took your time. For supeR,Bots, matchs started only one week after the end of the registrations.

Before, there was the CTF tourney that Brutal won, and before, there was the RN first tourney, using a beta of the Elimination mod that is now integrated in the game.

But anyway, stop comparing things that cannot be ! V's knock out tourney was a very nice idea, but it's not on the same scale at all as the OA Clan League ! You are comparing a small-scaled, quick tourney on 1 gametype with a big-scaled, league with selection and eliminatory phases and on 4 gametypes ! No such easy comparisons can be done !

Indeed, but when selection matchs will be finished, I think that the eliminatory matchs will be much more fast to be played (but I'm not into organization...).

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I can see you want to stop this discussion Wiiyamoto, so I won't argue too much, I understood your point of view, but I think that you miss the point by not getting the point of view of others. I know it because I had a similar vision as yours in the past.

For example, thinking that OA community can't do anything and that all the fault is on the author, and that OA is going to be dead soon, and a fork will take over, and the lama will invade the world, etc... all that is a vision of the past : none of these is true anymore, and I even doubt that it was in the past.

My vision was flawed because I couldn't see the point of view of others. Now that I invested myself in this project, I had to learn many things about the technical side of the game, about the community, about other communities and how they perceive ours.

Even if this project sucked my life for some months, I can recommend this experience to anyone, because it helped me to understand a lot of the things that are happening in the background, what we may call the hidden part of the iceberg.

Really, you can, we can, anyone can do something for OA, as one can contribute to environmental problems, or to the political direction of one's country. Don't just think you cannot act : you can, stop fleeing away, stop losing hope, stop being inactive. Just act, without looking behind, and you will move things forward. Create your History.

PS : Your requests and complaints are taken into consideration, may it be of use for a possible future events, if there will ever be one.

You are misunderstanding here which is why it won't work. If the clan CAN'T MAKE IT.... TOUGH FOR THEM!!!! THere can be many more tournies in the future! You think because 4 clans can't make it to quake con they delay the whole con? This is beginning to sound like it was planned to be a year long thing in which case I doubt any one would sign up for it.

The distant future. Version 3.0 or something I believe was discussed.....why is that being discussed when we arent even at 1.0 yet? The focus needs to be on NOW not Tomorrow.

Yes it can! You just have to do each game mode at different times not all at once! OAC did this and it was a very smooth tourney...it took only 1 month to complete! (give or take a week or two)

And for brutal and the RN clan I was not involved in clans in OA at those times (shortly after the tourney Brutal won) so I did not "see" them pan out.

The quickness of V's tourney was a lot of fun...and very competitive...I am very sorry that V did not hold more of them like one per month.

More emphasis on that last paragraph....it's a game dude xD A free, open source....game......that the people can only work with what is given to them. Everyone says the same thing when i give suggestions......BE MORE OPEN MINDED BLAH BLAH. This is looking at everything in a gray colour. The only problem is......nothing IS happening and nothing will.....if people look at things more black and white for a little while.......great change will come about for programming and community based events. But if you try to make everyone happy by delaying games....and delaying matches and dates..... and not utilizing more efficient ways to run the tounrey because a few clans dont like it......it will go nowhere fast.

Thanks for the discussion. DP will be working on our own CTF and RCTF tourney coming soon. I also am in the works for organizing a TRUE Open Arena Clan league with stats and titles for clans that will contain a seasonal/annual game time... (preferably the month of december) In which everey weekend is a series of games. If you are interested please PM me on the dp team forums and we can start planning.

Thank you too for the discussion.

I anticipate your initiative, and you can count on me if you need a technical adviser, but I won't take anymore any technical responsibilities after this league, I prefer to develop and innovate