Ra3L Team Size Rules

[Teaser]

Over recent days discussions about the rules of team sizes in the RA3 league have come up. This is getting frustrating, and we want it sorted. Either the rules stay as they are now, ie one player must drop to allow a 4v4, or you must have 5 players, and if not the game will be defaulted.

Reply to this with thoughts/ideas.

Teaser

 

[old.The Fixer]

Post your thoughts please people as we start on the 19th and we want this cleared up before then.

 

[old.Taylor]

Bleh

This is such a tricky one since as we all know real life and/or other online events get in the way of the best laid plans for games :/
Yet the current rule gives no penalty to those clans who do have only 4 players, and no advantage to those who managed to make sure they had 5 players.
A couple of ideas I thought of were...
Penalising the clan who only had 4 players with a round penalty (ie you start with a 3/4 round deficit to make up) pros: at least a game gets played and theres some form of penalty to discourage it
cons: if the team with 4 knows it has 4 strong players and the rest are 'weak links' it could focre 4v4 and hope to make up this disadvantage.

Or alternatively..

Putting a limit on the number of times you can field 4 players in the season, eg a team can only turn up twice understrength and after that they have to default the match (although I guess they could still play a game, just for fun, with their opponents).

But if it has to be one of the above choices, then I'm sorry but 5v5 and then below that its a default, its just too open to abuse :/

 

[old.Tha^Ersatz]

Oh that's a surprise, I've replied.

Okay, so the question is can a clan field 5 players? Well, to be honest, if a clan can't find a mere 5 people for a game that is known about well in advance, they should probably do some more recruiting. a3 have quite a large squad and because of that we have never defaulted, and so it annoys us more cos we can't go ``oh well remember when that rule helped us?`` because it never has. Division 5 was horrible last season for all the defaults. So yeah, 5v5 ONLY would help, and I think you could perhaps do something like Savage's 3-defaults-and-you're-out thing if you're not already. Really we shouldn't be having this discussion though, I mean 5 people isn't *that* many to try to get fs. [if you have a properly-sized squad]

I know you'll disagree with me, so just pretend I didn't post this or something.

 

[old.xBaboon]

5v5 is the way to go. Every clan enters this league knowing what day its played on, and that it's a game of 5v5. If a team knows for whatever extraordinary circumstances it will only be able to field 4, they should at least try and postpone the match and replay it at some point.

I know for a fact that at least one clan beleives that it's either 5v5 or 4v4, depending on how many they choose to field on the day, which it isnt, but as they know they won't get penalised for it, they'll just do it anyway.

The current rules make it feel like you get penalised for having 5 on the day, as the team with 4 can just wait until you decide which player you want to drop.

So yeah, defiantely a vote for 5v5, postpone if you know for a fact you will only have 4, or default if you just turn up with 4.

 

[old.NightStrike]

BX only have 5 players afaik

 

[bigfoot]

BX should recruit then, or arguably they are cheating the other clans by knowing most of the games will be 4v4 and therefore planning tactics for 4v4 instead of 5v5. Or alternatively they should be kicked out of the league, i know i would have very strong reservations about entering a side with so few players.

I like the idea of penalising the side with 4 with rounds, like allow 4v4 but give the side with 5 a 2 or 3 round head start effectively. This would help to discourage teams turning up with 4 perhaps.

 

[old.Swelt]

My feeling on 4v4 (as taken from http://www.clanx.org.uk)

The Semi XL v BX and the Final X v BX were both played 4v4. Why? Because BX were unable to get a 5th player. RA3 competition mode will not allow a game to proceed without even teams. This is great when, during a 5v5 a player crashes out as it pauses the game and gives time for the player or a sub to join in. However it means that a clan that can only field 4 players forces their opponent into the same situation. This can have a bad affect on tactics, and could also be abused:- say clan A is playing clan B. Clan A have 4 good players and one not so good. Clan B have 5 good players. If they played 5v5, clan B would probably pick off the weaker member of clan A, and then use strength of numbers to take down the rest. Knowing this, clan A might choose not to field with weaker player. I'm not saying that this is what happened with BX btw. It's also pretty dull for a clan like us with alot of active members - we struggle to get everyone a game as it is.

Answers.

1. Find a way of having uneven teams. The idea of an admin joining an understrength team has been discouted (fair enuff) though it did occur to me that by binding a key to "kill" the admins could get themselves out of the way with minimal effort. Not the tidiest solution anyway. CPMA might be an alternative, though this would require investigation and testing... I don't know if there is time.

2. Default any clan that can't field a team of 5. Hard but fair? On the one hand this wouldn't affect us, as we rarely have problems finding 5 (or 6) players ready and willing for a match. Those with smaller teams? Could be rough on them, could result in alot more games being defaulted rather than played (no fun for either team), but as I have said, to allow teams to regularly field 4 is open to abuse. Perhaps a system similar to Clanbase's Wildcard might be considered for those occasions where you really can't get 5. Once per season, a team which has 4 available players can play their wildcard. This match will then be postponed until later in the season. Wildcard must be played before teams join the server.

3. Penalise teams that field 4. Fairer and perhaps the best solution until we can get a competition mode that allows leniency in uneven teams. Could be difficult to administer. What if a team has 4 at the start, then after a few rounds their 5th turns up?

4. Keep the present system. Not keen on this.

 

[old.akiki]

:|

Hello everyone, although member of french clan BunK, I will just talk in my name, but my teammates would surely agree with me.

I just wanted to say that when you subscribe to any competition, you gotta play it seriously. I do not mean there can't be fun, kidding, and such stuff, I just mean that you gotta respect the rules.

Subscribing to a 5vs5 RA3 ladder/cup/championship means that you do not only engage yourself to play every match until the end of the league - what a pity to prepare a match sometimes for a week with your clan when you do not know the map well, or have poor/unsatisfying tactics on it, to finally win by a suckin default and miss the pleasure to play, especially when you're not about to take the lead of the league or win the cup at any moment.
But that also means to play a 5vs5 RA3 competition, in extenso to provide 5 players from your clan at any match unless an earthquake or such occurs (girlfriends, boyfriends, parents and what goes with them).

For example, my clan (BunK) had unattempted lack of players for the last barrysworld RA3 season, and we really did not wanted that to go on.
That's one of the main reason why we recruited a lot (the other is that we liked a lot the people we took with us
But I totally agree on the fact that we should have been penalized for that, as a lot of team would have been too.

I mean, there is no point in coming and saying something like, "hey, we are only 5 in our clan, this is not our fault, we cannot be always on the net, but we want, and have the right to play !" : Everybody would think it's ridiculous if I came too and said "Hey I have made a clan with my best friend, we are only 2 but willing to play, let's play 2vs2 all the ladder long !".

And I forgot to say, yes, it is very frustrating to have to drop off your team 10 seconds before the match begins, just because the other team was just unable to provide enough players.
By the way, I can understand one incident from time to time, but I do not remember having played a large majority of 5vs5 in all 5vs5 ladders/etc my clan is in, and that is really frustrating, especially for those of my clans who do not have the opportunity to play often.

That's why I insist on the fact that a 5vs5 competition must be played with 2 teams which count each 5 players, unless the team which does not apply that rule has to get a penalty (if not a default on one hand, but on the other hand a default is also frustrating for the winning team).
Too many penalties/defaults ( 1 ? 3? Don't know exactly, maybe 3 would be quite fair for a supposedly motivated clan) could lead to be fired from the league and be replaced by a really motivated clan.
And if it leads the Barrysworld RA3 League to only 3 or 4 divisions full of implicated clans that are respecting the rules of the league, this should definitely not be a problem for anyone.

Sorry to waste your time by a quite long post (pardon my poor english either but I really wanted to make things clear.
See you next season and good luck to everyone

akira`

 

[old.Tha^Ersatz]

Ye well with BX it was a bit suspicious that the moment we took the lead and were raping them 5v5 one of their players dropped and they didn't have any others to take that person's place (and he couldn't come back) .

 

[old.Tha^Ersatz]

1. Find a way of having uneven teams. The idea of an admin joining an understrength team has been discouted (fair enuff) though it did occur to me that by binding a key to "kill" the admins could get themselves out of the way with minimal effort.

-------

Oi I said that in the other thread.

 

[old.Tha^Ersatz]

There are quite a few solutions that involve doing 5v4, but they're all quite messy. For example, an admin could just join a team and then go and talk in IRC or whatever some of them do. As long as the admin's not moving in the arena it doesn't matter that he's on that team, cos he won't affect the game. There's no timelimit in this league AFAIK so it wouldn't matter if the other clan had to hunt down the admin after killing the rest of the clan.

That really IS messy, but it would work. Something has to change though.

 

[old.Tha^Ersatz]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm, have i posted enough replies now?

 

[old.NightStrike]

......or you could just use my suggestion and kick a3 from the league?

 

[old.Tha^Ersatz]

You could.

 

[old.Kapiter]

A 5vs5 league supposes 5vs5 matchs.

But I think that it can happen that a player does not show up. A good solution could be to handle this situation just like postpones. Like:

- first X times ok. 2 times seems fair during a long season.
- next times default loss

and as 3 defaults = removed of the league, I guess that teams with 4 players will recruit

just my 2 cents


*MsR*Kapiter

 

[old.Kapiter]

hum btw just thinking, in other leagues TDM or CTF, if a player is missing, the team just postpone, has a default loss or plays with one less player.
Everyone knows that and accepts it, why RA3 should be different ?

*MsR*Kapiter

 

[old.Taylor]

Because of the ghey competition mode, theres no (realistic) way of playing 5v4, so the team with 4 players is not disadvantaged in any way, hence there have been suggestions that teams are deliberately turning up with 4 players since that is their strongest team.

/me slaps crt with a big fat moose

 

[old.YoYo]

No way 4vs4 !

hi there !

By resgistering the RA3 league you know it is a 5vs5, so if you came with 4 player to play the war, then the war should be defaulted . point.

Since most of the team have developed tactics for a 5vs5 war, removing one clanmate is like destructing hours of training time to elaborate tactiks and strategies over a map.

So please repsect teams like that, and just give a default win to a team when the other show up with only 4 players.

[SxR]YoYo.

 

[old.Kapiter]

compmode

just wondering, is there any way to forbid spectating the opponent pov without setting compmode ? Perhaps in theserver config ? if yes compmode could be removed to allow 5vs4.
if not, well let's just stick to 5vs5 matchs I guess a huge majority agrees with that. if a clan have only 4 players it just ask a postpone.

 

[old.cheef]

5v5, no question!

As previously said, clans know of the rules of the league when they sign up or fill out an online application form. If they cannot field the required amount of people for the match, then they should record a default loss.

Okay, it's *harsh* in some respects, but until crt and his crew can sort it out (if ever?), then this is the only way to go. Clans MUST be penalised for fielding less than required.

in.cheef
http://www.clan-induce.com