Why do people create open tournaments? What's the motivation?

possible reasons might be:
promote new maps
improve skills
compete with friends
compete with advanced players

Something like this could maybe work. But we have to consider how it could fail, too: what if the tournament is only 5% filled, and everyone gets byes up to the end of a 512 person tournament? It would be kind of silly. Also, team tournaments are screwed, since not everyone would have a full team. I don't really like using AIs, since the AI will never be as good as a human, and in some cases it's even worse than not having a partner at all.

1. Make it so it only would happen to tournaments over 50% filled. (for team tournaments only count full teams)

2. People in non-full teams are dropped.

3. Do it byes only.

You could also make above 64-man tournaments members-only. Or 256+-man tournaments have to be either Lobbies or paid for by coins.

This is interesting. What if there's a coin cost for creating a tournament, and those coins are given to the winner(s) of the tournament? This would REALLY encourage people to join tournaments, and also keep the number created down to a realistic number, ensuring that they all start.

I don't really like this idea. I would rather the participants chip into a pot which is split between 1st 2nd and 3rd at like 70%/30%-entry fee/entry fee. Making the tournament itself should be free. Otherwise we would have to pay for all the tournaments for all the leagues. You would see the promo/releg league immediately vanish. Clan League would be difficult to run etc.

Make it so it only would happen to tournaments over 50% filled.

I'm afraid we'd still have the same problem we have now. We currently have 276 tournaments, most of which are not 50% filled.

If a player joins a 512 person tournament, and then it starts with just 3-4 people, it's still a bad experience. Tournaments should be big and exciting, they should get your adrenaline pumping and be a big deal. I don't think that will ever happen with the volume we have today -- there are just too many being created, which dilutes the importance of each one.

Otherwise we would have to pay for all the tournaments for all the leagues. You would see the promo/releg league immediately vanish. Clan League would be difficult to run etc.

We're only talking about open tournaments here. Private tournaments would still be free to create, and since you know who you're inviting for all those leagues then they'd be fine as private tournaments.

I would rather the participants chip into a pot which is split between 1st 2nd and 3rd at like 70%/30%-entry fee/entry fee

Yeah, I like that too. Maybe just 1st and 2nd though, since it's hard to determine reliably who is 3rd place. In a single-elimination, there are two people that have an equal claim on 3rd place.

i didn't understand we were speaking about only open tournament.
At this point i agree with Fizzer's idea of put an entry fee for the creator

I would like to point out that just because someone is a member or has paid money does not automatically make them better at making tournaments than everyone who hasn't paid money.

Also, it would be nice if there were some filters on the open tournament page, so we could find a tournament with some nice settings. I don't use the open tournaments page for this reason, it's just a clutter. I only join tournaments if (a) I made that tournament or (b) I get invited.

Auto-starting or cancelling tournaments after x amount of time is a bad idea. You have to first set an arbitrary value and then is it fair that a tournament is deleted after being 1 person away from starting?

Let's take a step back and ask: Why do people create open tournaments? What's the motivation? Is it because they like some specific settings/map and want to play a bunch of games on it?

I normally make tournaments to promote maps that I've made, normally just after the map's gone public.

Edited 2/10/2015 17:57:06

Tournaments should be big and exciting, they should get your adrenaline pumping and be a big deal.

You missed that goal by far and rather should make little steps to improve it, before you try to make gold out of shit.^^ There are already a lot of usefull suggestions. I dont really know whats the big deal about deleting tournaments instantly, when they havent started after months. or simply reduce the number of rounds, due to the number of players. Most players wont even remember, that they have joined this tournament. they will be much more surprised or even annoyed, when those tournaments finally start.

I believe there is two main reasons the tournaments are not getting filled. Invites being limited by inactive players (or players who simply don't see them, like on the various apps), an Auto-decline is needed to solve this imo.

Second, the tournaments are hard to find, why not add open tournaments to the new dashboard page? ( I know it shows when you've been invited to one, but that's not enough). Maybe Include it under the open games tab? Make a own tournaments tab? Whatever you do, I'm sure it would be nice (especially a own tab, where you could include symbols for the settings-like on open games)

And last, a filter (or ability to search for) for tournaments would be great, e.g ("x many players" "X boot time" (maybe even for template settings)". The main point is that the tournaments need to be more accessible for players.

I think "why do people create tournaments?" is the wrong question, Instead ask: Why do people not join the tournaments? (and if the answer is "there is too many", maybe restricting number of tournaments is the solution. (For example only 1 open tourney per player)

Filter out people who haven't responded to tourney invites within x days.

Just an idea, but what if War____ didn't even allow you to decide the number of rounds when you set up a tournament? War____ just would just automatically decide the number of rounds based on how many people have joined within a certain time frame or frames. This would work especially well with a standby waiting list system.

Example: You create a 1v1 tournament, the default is 3 rounds. 8 people join quickly enough, so a standby list is created. Then if 8 more people join on the standby list, an additional round is automatically added, and it waits for the standby list to get 16 more people. Once a certain clearly advertised deadline is reached, the tournament starts with however many rounds have been filled, and the people on the standby list don't get to play. There could also be a setting with a sliding deadline where the deadline gets moved back every time a round is filled.

Or since you don't like the idea of people joining (even joining a standby list) and not getting to play, I agree with the people who said you should limit the ability to create bigger tournaments only to people who have successfully created small tournaments. Do this regardless of member status imo.

+1 to whoever said open tournaments should be sorted. With more sorting, people might find and join a tournament instead of creating one. I wonder how many duplicate tournaments there are right now?

+1 to the team leader idea. The first person to join a team in a tournament would have an option to decline players who joined that team, as long as there is at least one open spot still available (or if the team is on the standby list, there would need to be room left in that standby list, not the next one) As someone who has been in a clan for awhile, I can't count the number of times I've tried to be on a team with my clanmates, only to have some random person join. Our options are to try and contact that person and convince them to leave (good luck with that), or all join another team and try to fill it fast. If there are no other open teams and that person won't leave, we just leave the tournament.

Edited 2/10/2015 19:12:59

for non-member tournament creation you could limit it also based on achievements like you need to have a successfully ended 4 team(or player) tournament before you can make an 8 team(or player) tournament. That should help non-members train as they go on what makes tournaments successfull. Non full tournaments should also time out.

@ Hennns and DanWL

one reason tournaments stall out is because people don't decline and you can't invite more people

You're talking about private tournaments. Open tournaments do not have this problem -- anyone can always join it, regardless of whether they've been invited

Now that I understand private tournaments wouldn't be affected, then just make it completely coin-based to do an open tournament. That's completely fine with me.

I'll throw a number out there. I support a 40 player limit for most tournaments.

It allows for an 8 team 5v5 double/single elimination, a 16 team 2v2 double/single elimination, a 32 player single elimination tournament with 5 rounds, or a 20 team 2v2 round robin. At that size, they fill up fairly fast, are decently big, and usually (although not always) finish within 3 months.

For those with bigger tastes in tournaments, have a couple of larger featured tournaments or make them pay/Member only to create.


When I am looking for a tournament to join, I like to know up front:
1. How many teams/rounds/players per team and number of players the tournament is waiting for.
2. Map (including number of territories)
3. Boot time (I prefer shorter)
4. Tournament type (round robin, single elim, double elim) and number of games at once.

P.S. I also like the idea of a standby list.

Edited 2/10/2015 19:47:46

A lot of the suggestions in this thread make the system more complex. Like laws, we should try for elegant solutions, not complex ones. Some simple filters, deleting or hiding tournaments older than __ days, and an "open tourneys" tab would all go a long way towards fixing the problems without restricting tournament creation.

@HankyPinky
The issue with people not declining tournaments does in fact affect open tournaments as well. Because when you reach the cap on number of invited players (so that you can't send more invites) less players will know of the tourney and it will take longer to fill. (this mostly affect tourneys where "forward invites" is possible for everyone). That is the main reason an auto-decline would imo help solve the issue with the 200s of open tournaments.

I see my idea was ignored (a way to trim rounds). You could help get tournaments to the correct size as well if the number of rounds was an unlock. So you could maybe only create a 4 round tournament until you reach a certain level.

As far as the question on why make tournaments, there are many reasons...

1) to facilitate a league/competition of some sort (clan league, promotion league, etc). You could also make all games manually, but that is a huge pain to admin. The tourney does all the organization for you.

2) to play against different people. This is different from the competition admin part because you are allowing random people to join (so long as you allow invites and/or it is open).

3) promote map and or template (already mentioned). fantastic way to get exposure to a template and/or map.

4) chat. Sometimes this is best way to pool people together for a competition of some sort

5) recognition. it is nice to have that email to everyone that says you won it. individual games don't do that.

6) less clutter. people will decline tournaments and not be cluttered. If you decline a game, you still see the game on your list until it is completed (VERY annoying). You will rarely use the filter on tournament list to see ones you declined.

Edited 2/10/2015 20:20:33

The invite list thing is still an issue with not allowing invites. Even with the option to clean it up on profile, people still don't.

I think by default the open seats should not allow someone inactive for more than 30 days. If it needs to be changed it can, but %99 of the time you don't want those people allowed to be invited.

I quite like Hankys proposal. It solves the problem with grace.

I would remove a tournament from the open tournaments list after 3 months
the tournament will still exist but not in the open tournaments list
also any kind of filtering/sorting mechanism would be a great addition

also if you could delete this:
https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?TournamentID=6301
that would be great