Should the Main Tournament Shut Down?

[superaielman]

*Waves to Revvy* Glad to see you around at least. Anyway, PM incoming for you.

Ex.  What if the site was primarily centered on making the best RPG discussion / friendship network among all sites?

It's sort of what it turned into. Monkey once said the best part of the DL is the forums and community, but that is hard to explain to voters conceptually.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

That's certainly why I hang around, for starters.

[Taishyr]

Ditto.

[Yoshiken]

Yeah, same. I joined for the tourn, I stay for the community.

But... it's kinda hard to make that appeal to someone. I mean, no site's gonna say "Yeah, our community sucks, but the site's good!" Of course any website will claim its community is better than most, since that'll attract new members.

[ThePiggyman]

Yeah, same. I joined for the tourn, I stay for the community.

[SnowFire]

Hmm.. if you wanted to make sure that vote totals wouldn't be lowered by a team tourney... could comprise all the teams from single games. So.. like a Chrono Trigger team vs. Suikoden team. That even gets Dual Techs and Unites in there.

It's funny you mentioned that, because I have a (board-based) team tourney involving all members from one cast ready to go - the idea of various RPG teams facing off against both each other and (unscaled) final bosses.  I was going to post it in early December but literally the same day Tide posted his idea for a Middles / Heavy team tourney....  which still hasn't run, actually.  Suppose I need to ask if that's going anywhere.

Anyway, I'd be cautious about the "one week break" idea.  You want people to have a habit of checking the site.  Too often where there's nothing happening can lead to decline even faster.  Now, if that's necessary to give people a break, then it's necessary, but still.  Even if people hate team matches / bonus matches, I'd hope that SOMETHING could be tossed up on "off weeks" if they were added.

[Yoshiken]

Maybe split up the rerankings and the team battle, and throw in a bonus match or two with that?
I was thinking, why not have the Godlike face off against the Light/Middle/Heavy champs together? Could go in a bonus week after rerankings and wouldn't require much effort on the writing side at all.

[Yakumo]

Hmm.. if you wanted to make sure that vote totals wouldn't be lowered by a team tourney... could comprise all the teams from single games. So.. like a Chrono Trigger team vs. Suikoden team. That even gets Dual Techs and Unites in there.

It's funny you mentioned that, because I have a (board-based) team tourney involving all members from one cast ready to go - the idea of various RPG teams facing off against both each other and (unscaled) final bosses.  I was going to post it in early December but literally the same day Tide posted his idea for a Middles / Heavy team tourney....  which still hasn't run, actually.  Suppose I need to ask if that's going anywhere.

Anyway, I'd be cautious about the "one week break" idea.  You want people to have a habit of checking the site.  Too often where there's nothing happening can lead to decline even faster.  Now, if that's necessary to give people a break, then it's necessary, but still.  Even if people hate team matches / bonus matches, I'd hope that SOMETHING could be tossed up on "off weeks" if they were added.

If it's a one-week break added into the regular schedule, all we would have to do is put a front page up with a message "The RPGDL Tournament will be returning on xx/xx/xx" or something like that to show that we're still active, just taking a short between-season break.  People will get used to it quickly enough.  I mean, really.  We have a six week season.  One week out of seven off isn't a whole lot of downtime for people to get bored and wander off.

Edit: though maybe we could do something for that week to put nom pools on the main site for anyone who likes the tourney but doesn't bother signing up?  Maybe integrate Hal's nom-checker?  Dunno if that would work on the one week break since we'd have to be able to put something up and wouldn't really be giving ourselves time for rolling and writeups... well, something to think about anyway, maybe we can find a way to work it.

[MC50]

I'm mostly just a lurker - I originally found this site through the Fire Emblem 7 Stat thing, and just checked around what was on the rest of the site. Normally I'm more interested in the topics then the main site, though I usually do look at it.

I like the main site tourney, but I almost always forget about it. I'll check it the Saturday, see who is fighting and plan to vote later that week - but usually I forget. Part of this is probably because of vote draw problems - I can usually only vote on two or three matches any given week (My own fault there)

And getting rid of things like the comments really hurts, especially the writeups before each match - I personally didn't check Not Ranked when the write ups were gone, it might as well just be on the tourney board then. (Which I am a big fan of! I almost never vote, but I like looking at what people think about the matches and the matches themselves.)

Yeah, I'm not sure what I'm really trying to say... I do like the main site, and noms is a lot of fun even if I don't say much, but the reason I keep checking back is for the community forums. My bookmark to the site is to the forums - I only go to the main site when I realize it's a new week. Well, I just wanted to say something, even if this is really incoherent. Whatever you guys decide to do, I'll keep checking the site.

[James_xeno]

I agree with super and the others.  The arena is the main draw of the DL and still a fun part of the whole experience. Evidenced by the disparity between the site's vote turnout and the forum topic (threads) participation level.

As for a lack of new people. Well we could try to make a more concerted effort to get the word out. If worse comes to worst, I could even put something (advertise) in my various sigs/profiles around the net. But i'm not sure how I, let alone everyone else, would feel about possibly drawing in a good number of random people from sites like 1up etc.

[SageAcrin]

All I know is that I'm tired and my writing quality has gotten shot to hell and it would be a simple thing to fix it if....I...just cared.

I don't anymore. Haven't written a long writeup in ages, the ones I have were substandard. I try, no caring comes out. I'm tired of trying to write personality into static characters, I'm tired of having to write around the ones you can't do that with, all the characters I found easy to do otherwise with I've written into the dirt, and... and...really, I'm just...out of elements I care about, writing-wise. I can still write but it's because I've done it so long that I can just BS something generic out. The times I don't make something generic now are the equivalent of those 20k writeups I used to do back twenty seasons ago.

I don't really care what decision is made. Shut the DL down...eh, I wouldn't miss it much at this stage, matches as matches stopped entertaining me about ten, fifteen seasons ago. Change of format would make it far more interesting to write for for a while, but it would be temporary admittedly. Maybe a long temporary, the current temporary lasted over five years, but temporary. Nothing wrong with temporary though.

And indeed, despite the flaws of voting issues, I really would like to see a team tournament. Nyarlie's dungeon is neat but far too much effort. A team tournament cuts down on voting but expands on interesting matches vastly and makes things much easier to write for(as you get allied interplay without having to write for pages to get it in there-fundamentally, if you think on it, that's why the long writeups were long.). Personally I think it's worth the drop in votes, seeing as how at this stage most of the DL can indeed vote on a vast majority anyways.

Yeah, it'll cut down on new people. The new people we aren't getting and haven't gotten for well over a year now, outside of single people who were interested in the tournament. I honestly don't think being able to vote on less of it than usual decreases that element. It decreases interest in a large, popular tournament, but for something with a niche draw like this, I disagree that the impact will be as signifigant.

Wouldn't mind seeing comments go. It's a pity. I dunno, give me a half a year off and maybe I'd volunteer to start it up again. I dunno.

All I know is that as of right now I've been burnt out on the concept so long that I basically hadn't realized it until recently. It's often hard to write for things, due to distractions, allergies, whatever, but I always *cared* to some degree, so that finding that I don't and haven't for a while is a bit of a surprise. But, I don't really care what the answer is. I'll keep writing the same stuff, if needed. I just won't care.

[superaielman]

I agree with super and the others.  The arena is the main draw of the DL and still a fun part of the whole experience. Evidenced by the disparity between the site's vote turnout and the forum topic (threads) participation level.

As for a lack of new people. Well we could try to make a more concerted effort to get the word out. If worse comes to worst, I could even put something (advertise) in my various sigs/profiles around the net. But i'm not sure how I, let alone everyone else, would feel about possibly drawing in a good number of random people from sites like 1up etc.

New blood is always good, it's the lifeblood of the site. Always feel free to spread the word.

[DjinnAndTonic]

So, perhaps it's time to make a topic that gathers all of these suggestions and makes a poll for which ones we're going to implement?

It's clear from the results of this topic that -something- needs to change. Only one person has voted not to change it at all.

There's roughly 6 or so ideas floating around this topic as is, and unless someone else has come up with another brilliant suggestion, we should make a new topic soon to democratically decide how we're going to change this site, be it some form of shortened/standardized writeups, a new tournament style, a focus on stat topics, week-long breaks, or just getting rid of the need to fill missing comments.

Whatever the vote decides, let's just do that. That way -something- will change. If it works out poorly, it's not like we can change it back, or try something else. This is a hobby site, it's natural to experiment with things to keep it fun and exciting.

[alanna82]

For me, the tournement is the main draw of the site. I've been here for years, and after work I will go and say, its Saturday, time to vote on the RPGDL!

I came here from the Fire Emblem stat link on GameFaqs, for reference. Been here since about season 18 or so (I remember I was like WTF when Ted downgraded from Godlike then)

I support making the DL season 7 weeks instead of 6, and the 7th week we could have a  not ranked bonus match or something like that. I think I was the only person that loved Not Ranked, even though I couldnt vote on alot of matches, I liked seeing characters from games I liked but were not ranked in the main DL.

I think the matches need writeups so people stay interested and maybe draw new people. I can advertise the site on other boards that I visit if need be. However the matches for the results do not necessarily need write ups there.

All in all, I love this site and the people. However, if the main tournament left, I'm not sure how often I would visit the site.

[Xeroma]

Have to harp in, I joined because Laggy hit me over the head with RPGMon. I didn't actually know there was a tourney site linked to that for at least a month or so after laggy made some friends of his[myself included] play it.

[Monkeyfinger]

I agree with super and the others.  The arena is the main draw of the DL and still a fun part of the whole experience. Evidenced by the disparity between the site's vote turnout and the forum topic (threads) participation level.

As for a lack of new people. Well we could try to make a more concerted effort to get the word out. If worse comes to worst, I could even put something (advertise) in my various sigs/profiles around the net. But i'm not sure how I, let alone everyone else, would feel about possibly drawing in a good number of random people from sites like 1up etc.

This method of advertising is how I found the DL 5 or so years back. People only did it on GameFAQs as far as I know, and very few DLers post frequently on GF boards anymore because they're fucking crap now.

Yeah, that kind of thing is kosher. It's uncommon now because we have so few feelers in communities that might care about us (I post on other forums but they're either not about RPGs, don't use sigs, or really hate people who use sigs as advertising space), but there's nothing wrong with it.

[DjinnAndTonic]

And finally, keeping the tourney on the main site has the drawback of keeping something -else- from being there. I'd love to see some of the creativity that's running around here get turned towards the problem of what to do with the site without the main tournament focus - I think it's something that can be solved, and still bring people in; I've suggested turning the stat topics into the site focus, as one idea, and I'm sure there are others that could be advanced. But as long as the tournament occupies top billing, it's easier for people to be complacent, go with the idea that "it's good enough", and let things continue on the slow downward slide they've been on for some time.

So there's your challenge: Don't tell me why we shouldn't kill the tourney; tell me why we should keep it.

Well, I would argue that a lot of the reason the tournaments on the forums are interesting is that they are variations of the 'official' tournament. We can only -have- these board tourneys because we've spent so much time analyzing the duelists from their 'basic' forms in the main-site tournament. Really, even if a lot of us are more interested in the board tourneys or stat topics or RPGmon, these things only work because they've had practice in the basic formula. At least, that's how it appears to me.

You could add a lot of the other 'creative ideas' floating around the forum to the main site in some form, but since they are primarily adaptations of the main tournament, they are going to seem hollow without that backbone.  Put another way, newcomers are more than likely going to be confused if we get rid of the main tournament entirely.

Now, that doesn't mean the main tournament can't be changed. It also doesn't mean that it can't be put on hold to try out something else temporarily. But to completely drop it seems counter-productive to making the 'extras' we like more enjoyable.

And again, if we started the process of standardizing the writeups, we still have a functioning site, with opportunities for writers to get creative on matches they actually care about, and the majority of the 'work' involved is now the fun part of the main tournament - noms and match discussion! Once you reach that point, I can't see any reason to drop the tournament if it practically runs itself and we can just sit back and enjoy the discussion.

It also frees up time for us to implement more of those 'creative ideas' that we could add to the site in addition to an easy-to-run main tournament. And if one of those ideas is as awesome and creative as all that, it can supplant the tourney as the 'main attraction' while we still have the tourney running as a side event.

I support making the DL season 7 weeks instead of 6, and the 7th week we could have a  not ranked bonus match or something like that. I think I was the only person that loved Not Ranked, even though I couldnt vote on alot of matches, I liked seeing characters from games I liked but were not ranked in the main DL.

Don't worry, you're not the -only- one who liked Not Ranked. But I suppose we're something of a minority. I will personally volunteer to do a NR bonus match every seventh week if we go with this suggestion. If anyone else wants to write one sometime, that's cool too. But I'm offering to be the one to take responsibility for it.

I agree with super and the others.  The arena is the main draw of the DL and still a fun part of the whole experience. Evidenced by the disparity between the site's vote turnout and the forum topic (threads) participation level.

As for a lack of new people. Well we could try to make a more concerted effort to get the word out. If worse comes to worst, I could even put something (advertise) in my various sigs/profiles around the net. But i'm not sure how I, let alone everyone else, would feel about possibly drawing in a good number of random people from sites like 1up etc.

This method of advertising is how I found the DL 5 or so years back. People only did it on GameFAQs as far as I know, and very few DLers post frequently on GF boards anymore because they're fucking crap now.

Yeah, that kind of thing is kosher. It's uncommon now because we have so few feelers in communities that might care about us (I post on other forums but they're either not about RPGs, don't use sigs, or really hate people who use sigs as advertising space), but there's nothing wrong with it.

If we're going to discuss a membership drive while we're at it, then we totally need to tap the ROM-hacking community. They would really fit in here with our particular brand of OCD mathematics-loving group.

[dude789]

If we wanted to do the week 7 bonus match I think it would be cool if we could use it to help us find out whether a game is ready to be ranked or not. We could take a not ranked match with two characters from games that have a solid chance of being ranked (say Micaiah vs. Empoleon or something) and then we could add a few follow up questions  such as "Can you vote on Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn" or "How much would you like to see Pokemon D/P get ranked" to get an exact read on the number of voters and find out just how many people can vote on the game and how interested they are in it. 

[DjinnAndTonic]

It would be awesome. Especially if we could get our Bonus matches uploaded correctly. *glares at his mangled Bonus match this week* (No images, left out my intro, and cut off the end of the writeup... what happened?!)

[OblivionKnight]

Well, I don't have time to run a full comment notation here (I do intend to respond to the main question of the topic), but I at least want to throw out ideas.

These ideas have come up in the past, either myself suggesting them (mostly), or another person suggesting them.  These haven't been implemented that I know of before.  These ideas run a huge gamut of possibilities, and I haven't organized them yet - they are changes to reduce workload, add new stuff, etc.

1) Elongating the tournament weeks to 8 instead of 6.  This reduces the total work on weeks 1 and 2 (by doubling the period over which they are done, effectively).  I'd love to combine this with...

2) Kill the re-rank week.  It's boring, people tend to talk little about it.  I understand why it's done, but there has to be some other way to do it.  How about the champion and runner-up of the division vs. a random person who lost in the first week in the same division?  Roll a dice to select the person (so 25% of the loses, 2 out of 8).  Do it like a normal match.  For example, Season 53 Middle: Axl and Yulie would randomly be pitted against 1 each of either Rena, Junpei, Rauny, Raijin, Teddie, Lun, Joachim, or Setzer (obviously ignoring the person they would have fought week one, so no Yulie vs. Setzer or Axl vs. Rauny).  If the champ wins, they upgrade.  Downgrades...a couple ways they could be handeld - the aforementioned people who lost to the champ and runner-up in the first week could just downgrade automatically - at least keeps things relatively dynamic.  It's 2 write-ups per division (so like a normal current week 4), and at least is, in my mind, more interesting than re-rank week as-is.  It's a bit random, but would most certainly keep people more interested in it.  

3) Let's add another tournament to go alongside things.  For example, in that last week, why not have, say, NR going alongside it, or a team tournament?  It's integrated, people know when it's coming, and it doesn't take away the focus of the "main" tournament.  Couples league, NR/Ranked Teams, etc.  

4) Let's do other stuff.  How about a group IAQ?  I mean, we could put in mechanics, easily!  I have loads of ideas I've been working on randomly myself, but for a group of us, why not do it?  There was one at one point GH was working on, but we can do something different.  Everyone can get involved, make it a group project.  Let's use our obsessive compulsive anal retentiveness for our advantage!  I mean, what's the culmination of the normal stats work we do?  Making out our own based on what we know and would like to see.

5) Get back into doing reviews and other stuff.  Even if it's generic, I like writing them (and need to finish the several I have, and make a real schedule), and people I THINK like reading them.  We have some great writiers, and I'm sure changing pace from write-ups to editorial-like stuff will help.

6) Promote ourselves more - MF6, LFT.  This has been gone over with other people, but one of the issues is that, when you've found a good community, you tend to not move out of it often.  I know one of the concerns in the past was don't promote to random places en masse, but...I honestly think that's too selective if you want new blood.  I don't frequent much anywhere but here and a few sporadic places, but what about parts of TGWTG?  They have a lot of game-related stuff there.  There's also other smaller websites and places to go.  If you can grab someone, bring them in - if you find the community the best part, share that best part.

7) Hey, what about playing a game with RPGmon?  Let's use the stat topics.  Here's an idea I want to run - I'll make a posting in the tournament section (...lemme update UToUD - VOTE ELFBOY - first >_>) for a division.  Say Heavy.  People will choose 1 person in Heavy, run it by me, ensuring it has a stat topic (hence, NR having rankings would help with this).  All normal RPGmon actions sent through the intermediary (me) to make sure both sides are blinded.  I'd throw down the turn order, and people would PM me actions - similar to Captain K. when he was running the Battle Mages thing.  

8) ...I thought I had more, but that's it.  I need to get back to work, but I'll try to post later.  Just some ideas I had, wanted to get out there.

[superaielman]

If we wanted to do the week 7 bonus match I think it would be cool if we could use it to help us find out whether a game is ready to be ranked or not. We could take a not ranked match with two characters from games that have a solid chance of being ranked (say Micaiah vs. Empoleon or something) and then we could add a few follow up questions  such as "Can you vote on Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn" or "How much would you like to see Pokemon D/P get ranked" to get an exact read on the number of voters and find out just how many people can vote on the game and how interested they are in it.

Every type of direct feedback question we've tried like that has worked out very poorly. Fans don't respond to that. The RPGP was a much larger site and had the same problems with feedback like that.

[Scar]

You should make a Tournament of Champions edition of the Dl where only past winners are allowed to fight and compete and to be fair of sorts, make it a double elimination type round robin deal.

[Dark Holy Elf]

2) Kill the re-rank week.  It's boring, people tend to talk little about it.  I understand why it's done, but there has to be some other way to do it.  How about the champion and runner-up of the division vs. a random person who lost in the first week in the same division?  Roll a dice to select the person (so 25% of the loses, 2 out of 8).  Do it like a normal match.  For example, Season 53 Middle: Axl and Yulie would randomly be pitted against 1 each of either Rena, Junpei, Rauny, Raijin, Teddie, Lun, Joachim, or Setzer (obviously ignoring the person they would have fought week one, so no Yulie vs. Setzer or Axl vs. Rauny).  If the champ wins, they upgrade.  Downgrades...a couple ways they could be handeld - the aforementioned people who lost to the champ and runner-up in the first week could just downgrade automatically - at least keeps things relatively dynamic.  It's 2 write-ups per division (so like a normal current week 4), and at least is, in my mind, more interesting than re-rank week as-is.  It's a bit random, but would most certainly keep people more interested in it.

EDIT: I misread this post slightly in my initial response. Instead of the Middle champs facing a person from Middle, I thought they should face someone from HEAVY. Still do. It makes no sense to upgrade based on a first-round loser in your own division. Rest of the post assumes that Middle champ/runner-up face a Heavy, and so on.


This is a decent idea. I like rerank week in principle; I think it's a very effective way of making sure people who upgrade deserve to (not 100% effective, but very good). But there's no doubt it's a daunting amount of voting and uninteresting to many voters.

Reducing it to two matches per division (actually, per division border) would work. This was proposed early in the DL's life but was shot down as being unfair/unindicative of who should actually go up and down. To some extent of course this is true, but these days it seems a sacrifice worth making for a more interesting rerank week. There's something very appealing about the smaller number of matches, complete with writeups, with a lot that is very obvious on the line: win and you upgrade! Lose and you downgrade! etc.

The main amendment I would suggest is that the chosen losers to be pitted against the champ and runner-up aren't random. I don't really think that randomness is fair. Instead, it'd make more sense to me to choose the two losers who lost by the widest margins, and/or have the lowest rankings in an attempt to try to weed out the weaker duellers.


EDIT: And since this does create 12 more writeups in week 6 (not a heavy week, but still more than we had before), I would definitely support a week 7 break if we did this.

[Scar]

How about some of these not ranked characters fight against the champions in the Bonus/off week of the tournament. If they win, they should get like an automatic bid to fight in the next season or something. If they lose, then they are doomed to walk around in the dark clutches of NR's empty arena.

[Hunter Sopko]

So this is really a "Why We Fight" topic where we need to seriously look to ourselves and decide if the Arena is worth the work going forward. I'll bite, because it's a completely legitimate question with the way things have been going. Yeah, we're stagnating, but the biggest key here, at least internally, isn't that people want it to keep going, but that the writers truly want to keep putting the work in. I still see this, and I include myself in that. As to why it couldn't be moved to the forum, if people are going to be putting in the work, why shouldn't it be on the main site? People already have 100 tournaments going on the forum. Moving it there would make it just another thing despite the work being put into it, which doesn't do it justice.

Now, I agree things need to change. The workload needs to be split up or changed. I agree with OK in that splitting the Preliminary rounds from 2 weeks to 4 would probably be the best way to do this. It cuts down the amount of writing and gives us a predictable hump that we're used to while still moving the season along at a nice clip. I know we're a bit more obscure/inclusive than BCB, but that format seemed to work for him, and I don't think it'll turn people off if . Rerank week should stay the same. The way to combat writer fatigue is not more work. If a work-around/compromise can be reached, then sure, but I've honestly never saw Rerank week as a lot of work voting-wise, nor all that boring. But I'm willing to go with majority rule on this one.

As for a break week in between, it really depends on how it was done. If we go with splitting the prelims up, I don't think we should have one. An 8 week season is kinda pushing it, and a 9 week one would probably be killer. If we don't, a break is a good alternative. We could just make Reranking two weeks, or take the break completley and just be frank on the front page about it. Backburner ideas for this time involve a little work, so they're secondary but people can comment if they want. It's possible to implement Sage's team match idea during this week, solving the voting problem by just constructing teams from the same game. It'd be little work and I think the DL would have fun with it (ie, Nyarlie's). It also gives us the opportunity to work on it WAAAAAY in advance. Yeah, it doesn't quite have the random element, but if it's going to be a once a season thing we shouldn't really worry about that too much.

NEB's idea of how to switch up the Rerank week has merit, but I also agree with him that it'd require a week break with nothing happening in between with the extra work it adds, which puts me on the other side of the fence for it.

Killing match writeups is fine. Leave the option of people submitting them during the week as well as on the board, but getting off of the idea that they're manditory would help sanity some.   

I completely and fully agree with putting other things into focus on the main site. MF6 and LFT for one. Stat-topics too, but I have yet to hear a solid idea of how that would be implemented despite calls for it. People already work on stat-topics in their spare time while still writing, so I don't think there'd be a conflict there at least at the moment. Once people get an idea together of how to include them on the main site, there may or may not be a huge body of work to be done to get that up and running. If we needed to take some time off in-between seasons to do this, I'd be for it, since after that it'd just be maitenence and adding more stuff to the format we already have. The site has a lot to offer, so anything that puts that into greater prominence gets my vote.

I sympathize with the people that are burned out and want to stop writing. There's nothing wrong with that. But as long as we have people who want to keep the arena going and will still put the work in, I believe it should keep going. If there comes a time when no one wants to do it anymore, then let it die a natural death. Let's not artificially kill it right now.