It seems things may be changing in the clan scene. I think we need to take advantage of this.

I propose an all round clan 2v2 event. Limiting each clan to three teams.

This would be similiar to the blood masters I held, where you can only pick a map once before the final, I also think the double elimination would be nice for this.

I am all for it. It's a start in the right direction.

Name of Tournament: Naming is important.

Banner: I'll ask Dave to make one, his work is really nice

Format: Double Elimination BO3? 7 Map Pool? Are we persuing all maps like CBs+Bloods or do two separate events? I know for sure you'll turn away a lot of players if CB is combined with Bloods for the tournament, but you'll also gain some CB/RCB players potentially. Minimum of 12 teams to give out prize? If we have byes, seed 1 team from the top clans entered (won't be hard to decide).

Rules: Self Explanatory really. I think we should have somebody outside the CS clans circle run the event. Someone who cannot and will not have a biased view with certain issues.

Regularity: How often are we going to host a clans event? Monthly, bi-monthly? Every 6 weeks? Will it depend on the success or are we going to give up?

Prizes: 1 month clan premium? Award on both players involved wall and the clan wall (RVK have an RTS award on their wall). Special user-colour in member list (allow clan to pick colour themselves from HEX/RGB Value - lasts til next tournament and then resets - only requires tiny Voobly update to CSS code). ???

Advertising: Banner I can get sorted. We have Taff advertising with message alerts and through the website/lobby (if we could get the banner onto the Front page and to be stickied to the top it would be great - lot's of people tend to spam walls so we could lose the tournament message to a lot of players quickly of their news feed). ???

You guys are asking why things are the way they are, here are some contributions and ideas to change the way things are. People are becoming sick of CBA it seems, even the people who **** it have slowly moved to Rm since bloods are dead.

If we could sort out the advertising, I'd love to be able have it like rm tournaments. Where they have to go find each other during a set time and play, then post the recs in a thread. Otherwise, we are totally excluding certain timezones because 3/4 people doing tournaments are in GMT.

Well that would be an ideal scenario, but I'm unsure if players are able to do that. The only way you can enforce this is if you have an Admin time as back-up, and players taking screenshots as evidence of the other team admitting forfeit if they are unable to make the time.

For example, a match-up between Zanchy and Sean could potentially end up in a dispute over many things, whereas a match-up between the same clan players would run smoother. Myself and Dave attempted in running this style of tournament a couple years ago, however it was in a 3v3 format. I got the amount of sign-ups needed from each clan, but the amount of disputes and misinterpretation of the rules made it a nightmare, as well as clans opting not to play their matches at all.

The other thing is you have to account for teams dropping out and not playing their games after a week or two. RM have a tournament like this but 3v3 format called RTS-L. They are up to the 31st or 32nd season of hosting this tournament. It's strictly run, I forgot to put a team in this season =[.

Personally I'd love to play in a tournament with this style (I've had no issue with this format during last $15K tournament when we played 5 rounds of matches). It's just that there wouldn't be a strong enough incentive to drive players to go to the effort of seeing through the tournament (much like your bloods tournament with same set-up), it was a nightmare trying to schedule games in my pool because people were never online or responding. But then again, BzH pulled off the recent MoA successfully with this style of tournament even with big names withdrawing.

I know, as you say I experienced it first hand.

Incentive, yes. I want to trial run a score system for regualr blood tournaments first I think. See if it actually interests anyone at all.

I was thinking something like this:

Winner gets #participants / 4 and its rounded in the case of weird sized events.
32 = 8
16=4

Runner-up gets one less than that, and third gets one less than second.
Winner of 32 man tourney: 8
Runner up of that event: 7
Third place of the event: 6

All participants get a point for showing up.
Most impressive improvement in a non placed player gets another extra point for effort.
Best behaved player gets a point for manners.
Badly behaved players will get deducted a point.

I think it should go
Winner: 8
Runner-up: 6
Third-Place: 5
Fourth-Place:4

Then the rest for sure. Except the best behaved player, that's a hard award to really judge without being scrutinised by community for bias. Maybe find another way of expressing the same intention in the award (most helpful?). Anyone can see most improved for sure, though.

I'd imagine you'll want to run two systems, one for clan tournament and one for regular CS tournaments?

edit; Dave said he'll make banners for Europe tournament and Clan tournament.

Whats maps are we going to use? If I was to be responsible for choosing, naturally I'd pick maps that with practice I'd be more than confident in for a 2v2 sense like Europe, Smosh, Germs, Gwarz etc. wish would be counter-competitive and counter-productive for the tournament and plain selfish. I don't think a voting system would work too well, nor getting the community involved. I think we honestly need one person to stand up and make the hard choice instead of a group of us.

I know if you desire the oldschool players to participate, you'll have to avoid CB maps unfortunately. If you want newschool players involved, they'll most likely demand for CBA/CBA Hero and possibly RCB. I won't discuss my thoughts on those maps as I'm obviously biased against them and the perception of skill many people seem to find in them. However, I would like to say that CBA and CBA Hero should get an alternate tournament (1v1/2v2) between them a month (example. CBA for January, CBA Hero for February) as they are the most popular maps. RCB once every 3 months as it tends to fail miserably. You guys promote old and fresh maps really well like KoT/Desert already. I'd love to push for a clans 2v2 once a month and encourage both my clan and the community to participate as well.

Can we get more VCOM members input and thoughts? So far it's the three of us atm, and I've seen others reading this thread already ^.^

Well, I don't want to be involved in blood stuff tbh.
if you ask me what maps should be in 2v2 clan event as CB's, I would say CBA, CBAHero, CBF, RCB.
and bout the tourneys of cb, I've been running cb tourneys already. we did 2v2 cba and 2v2 rcb next one is 1v1 cba hero. and probably we gonna run 3v3 cba at september.

Sounds very good, those events shall be more competitive than the daily tourneys since it allows everyone to signup it.

Name: "XXX-League - Season #" ? (XXX: name of the map-pool: Bloods/CB/CBA...)

Format:
RTS-League is popular because of several reasons:
- A group stage and then playoffs. It allows all teams to play several rounds, and then avoids the weaker one to be kicked early. It also give them room for improvement.
- The home-away style, each clan picks a home map. Only 2 games per round. (When there is a tie in playoffs, 3rd game is on BlindRandom)
- Completely free civilisation choices, for example, a whole team can pick huns in a 3v3 arabia game.
- Default format is 3v3 (in RM 2v2 is more like 2*1v1, in 3v3 the pocket player go straight to castle age which changes a lot the overall gameplay), but 2v2/4v4 can be alllowed if both clans agree. This usually avoids troubles if 1 player does not show up, or add some fun if both teams have too much players.
Those rules hav not changed during the last 14 seasons, before that i was not playing aoc but i would not be surprised if it was those rules during the 1st season already.

There is another RM league (AoC-Liga) and a dead one (LMA-League) who have/had less success because:
- 1 map at least is/was always fixed by the league admins. Always 3 games per round, even during group stage. This requires more free time for the players and force them to play a map they do not always like (in addition to the home map of their opponents they may not like already).
- 2v2 is/was not allowed, all games are/were 3v3, and that always increase the number of admin loss/team quitting the tourney early.
- Civilisations restrictions (usually players have/had to pick different civilisations)

I know the CS maps can be way different from one to another (CBA/Blood by example), but as some of you wrote it you can probably do a Blood league first, then a Castle Blood league - i know both have several maps available; for CBA maybe you could use home-away civilisations (each team picks both civilisations for one game, opponent having to mirror it).

The big advantage you have over rm for this is there are no other cs leagues at all. The drawback is that the cs community is overall younger, which involves less care, and probably a worst english level also, which can be annoying for scheduling. You will probably need to set up more often admin times than in rm.


Prizes:
Imo team premiums are not really attractive, it brings some cool stuff for the team founder/captains but that's it, team members do not benefit about it (no widescreen, no extra slots on the friend/ignore list ...)

It would probably be better with account premiums, especially if it is about 2v2 tournaments. But then you would have to reduce the CS daily tourney prizes to make long-run events more attractive (Noone will bother scheduling & playing a 2 months tournament for 1 year platinum membership if they can get a 6months one in 1 day)

Shields cost nothing and can be added on team rosters.


Advertising:
Any level 1 moderator can change the welcome message in the lobbies and it takes like 30seconds, just pm one in the lobby.
For the advertise in the news feed on the front page, i usually write a post in staff forums or ask to martin/tic, they do it right away or after few hours at max.
A banner would be great of course.
You can also trying to advertise on aoc-zone, many rm players (myself included) are also casual cs players and may give it a try.


Forums:
Each VCOM captain can add subforums, if you are not comfortable with it just let me know what architecture you need and i can make it.

This thread was annoying to follow .
My Thoughts -
'It seems things may be changing in the clan scene. I think we need to take advantage of this.'
Yes three of you here seem to think the only way of saving CS is to break up Eot_ into smaller clans. Im an Eot leader so Im not a fan of this thought process. If your going to keep pushing it make sure it works. So far all I see is thoughts/hopes of what might happen with no data to back up anything. I will keep telling everyone in the Xcel team *except Opalo* they are ****s so hopefully this need for clan bitterness you all want develops.

'I propose an all round clan 2v2 event. Limiting each clan to three teams.'
It would have to be 2v2 because no clan outside of Eot and Vicious know how to play maps with 5 or more players involved. Vicious is a retirement home so really only one. *Bitterness angle*
Sounds like blood league all over again. I think the moderator(s) have to set the times even if its for multiple time listings. Certain CS players like to play angles or be dishonest over certain situations. They need to be watched more closely than RM players. *I realize now Ben addressed this somewhat in his next post but ill just reinforce it*.

If you want to assign value based on number of participants you need to do it differently imo.
Best way to do it is treat it like a Prizepool tournament if its not to complex. For one it gives players motive to make tournaments as large possible. The more players who enter the higher the potential award becomes. Each person who joins is worth 1 point *the point you award for signing up*.
Then you assigned a percentage value based on placement. You can still give each person who joins a point for participation.
So for instance a tournament with between 16-32 entries could go like this
20 Players = 20 Points
1st 50% = 10 Points
2nd 30% = 6 Points
3rd 20% = 4 Points.
For tournaments with odd figures you could just round down and give the extra point to first. If you have more than 1 extra point you can give the next point to 2nd.
Example 27 Players = 27 Points
1st 50% = 13.5 *14*
2nd 30% = 8.1 *8*
3rd 20% = 5.4 *5*

32 - 64 Players
32 Points
1st 40% = 12.8 *13*
2nd 27.5% = 8.8 *9*
3rd 20% = 6.4 *6*
4th 12.5% = 4 *4*

45 Points
1st 40% = 18 *19*
2nd 27.5% = 12.375 *12*
3rd 20% = 9 *9*
4th = 12.5% = 5.625 *5*

Good behavior award is silly.
Bad players shouldn't be allowed to compete... but you need as many teams as possible so just make clear rules of things that will be punished within the event.
Extra point for an surprise result is a good idea to me. Every player who has placed in a tournament previously could be deemed a ranked player.. and if an unranked player defeats a ranked player they could receive a point.

Also take into account...If you want a reward system based on multiple events and a point scale like It appears whats to keep clans that are out of contention from continuing to compete? What happens if 2 clan members get in a fight and split? Are each of them allowed to make a new team with a different player/clan midway through? Consider hosting a finale event where each player is worth two points might keep teams that are behind interested.
This is the very funny irony behind this clan idea to me... are any of you aware of how many 2v2 teams would actually show up to play an old school blood map? If everything was perfect and we could promote this so that every CS player knew about it.. we had written visual and audio guides to all maps... it would still be difficult to get anywhere near the amount of teams CBA would produce with this *must be in a clan* *max of 3 teams per clan* structure. Im curious if the most popular Blood map could produce more than 20 2v2 teams with these conditions... never-mind a map that is never played by average joe CBA player.
CBA / Hero could work... but the two main voices in this thread are not doing this with the idea of promoting these two maps.

I wish AOC-CS had 300 competitive blood players and all these productive thoughts could be used to please them. Unfortunately it has around 30 half of which don't even care about an idea like this.

That is exactly why I said somebody outside of the clans structure needs to make the hard decisions of the map pool. I said I'm naturally biased against CBs like my clan with my own reasoning.

I'd let my views slip and participate for this event even if the maps were all CB genre for the sake of helping VCOM and promoting clan gaming in CS as much as I would hate practicing these maps that have killed much of the community I used to know. You've already lost LC and ViCiouS, which along with Eot_ are the powerhouse clans in outright CS skill when active. However I guess you need to take things in a new direction and hope you can work with the current generation of Zanchys.

It's a delicate situation with what maps you choose. Do you use CBA and CBA Hero which have the same lay-out but different game-play (much like Deathrow and Gwarz/Graves and WoA)? Do you include RCB or MCB which have had/have their own communities with clan structures? You'd obviously exclude Europe for the sake of preventing argument. Do you include any AOK maps for the AOK community (Radical/Archers/SS/Herofest)? Do you include any bloods besides Smosh which aren't played near the extent of the other maps? What about Alternate maps like dodgeball?

It's easy for any of us to say which and which not to use because our choices are influenced by what we'd like to see which is only natural. I'm not sure who you could enlist to make the decisions, but in terms of success, 1-2 people making the choices is a lot more successful than a panel or community (first-hand example commercially is the Australian soccer league which was dying. One man took over, made the big decisions and the hard decisions, and totally revolutionized the structure. Removed over half the teams down to 8 all up, and enforced a more centralised team base. Everyone was skeptical and everybody was a critic. Ever since Australian soccer has been growing rapidly, skill has grown exponentially and we're playing Champions League Football, and on a national basis we're consistently qualifying for the World Cup/Asian Cup, which before the change, we hadn't qualified for in 30 years or more.).

Although this is a completely different situation, I can see similarities and potential.

Its a great idea and its something i think alot of us have wanted for a while as in a tourney based over more than one week like what is done very successfully in rm. The only problem in the past is people tend to drop off if they arent doing so well, so what i would suggest is maybe doing it over a shorter time frame as in as maybe only a few weeks. But also having some kind of incentive to continue playing as in winning something each week. So even if your team isnt doing so well on any given week you can still win something. Once people get the hang of the system it opens the doors for future tourneys.

With that being said i think its important to keep it as simple a format as possible along with opening it up to clans having more than one team. Could perhaps have it so its 2v2 but that each team as a pool of 4 to choose from in order to try and make sure there are players available to play along with opening the door to prehaps being able to pick a better team depending on map choice. Naturally with clans having more than one team it opens the door to at least a bit of inter clan rivalary but that at the very least i think people keep a degree of interest with players.

With it being a clan tourney naturally i think there should premium prizes for clans, its only right you win something for your clan. But as i was saying above we should perhaps have prizes for grabs each week as well in order to encourage people to play.

Regarding maps i think its kind of a tricky one cause we all have our own prefrences so for me there would have be a variety of maps as in right across the board so that nobody would feel comfortable with everything. E.g a cb map, an oldschool aoc blood, an aok map, an alternative map and perhaps throwing in rm and dm

Charlie you misunderstood me. I said nothing about bloods in that post, apart from mentioning the format I used in that tourney. I only mentioned the rm way of doing things as an ideal situation. Its not going to work. Not saying we shouldn't give it a damn good try, but lets be realistic about it.