Fizzer:
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. The only reason tournaments reach the invite limit is due to abuse of the invite system -- people are just spamming everyone rather than actually inviting players who they want to play a tournament with. This leads to people ignoring tournament invites, which is the fundamental reason they're taking up a space in that tournament. We can talk about private tournaments more in a different thread, but let's keep this thread about open tournaments, as the subject says.


The abuse of the invite system is beacuse the invite system it's a mess. The friend list it's actually an "acquaintance list", and each time you met a player the list growths more, making it too time consuming to sort it. Make a real friend list (and clan list), and this problem should drop a bit.

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.

1. You can do this with a private tournament.

2. Aye

3. Aye

4. Again, done with private tournaments.

5. Aye

6. Hopefully they can fix this.

Just would like to remind everyone that the topic is about open tournaments, ones that allow anyone to join and show up on the open tournaments page. So basically what I'm getting at, if I understand correctly, leagues and any other private-type tournaments will be completely untouched by anything we discuss on this thread.

I posted this to Fizzer on skype because I wanted to remind myself to post this on the forums. I used to play a competitive game called Bloodline Champions, and in that game there were auto-tournaments every other day run by the game itself. Winners of these tournaments would get a special tournament currency that they could buy items or skins as a sort of trophy. I don't see why we couldn't do something like that on here. I thought it was inventive and a very enjoyable aspect of that game.

This "bad experience" of tournaments being deleted isn't important. If anything it would teach tournament creators to be more reasonable with what they create. People already experience this with the regular open games.

As Hennns said the issue with people not declining tournaments is still a problem with open tournaments. It only takes one person to invite their whole list and then your waiting for people to find you instead of being able to find players.

I don't know what level tournaments unlock but it should be at least 50.

Combine those ideas with mobile having access and that should solve the problem.

Making open tournaments have a coin fee would also solve the problem because it would kill the open tournament scene.

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.

I'm thinking about completely disabling invites for open tournaments. Why does someone need to be invited when the tournament is open? It's open to everyone -- just join. Inviting is just over-complicating things.

In return, open tournaments would get a *lot* more promotion. They'd be listed directly on the Tournaments tab, and even maybe some limited exposure on the main multi-player page.

The goal is for all open tournaments to start quickly (within a day or two). Ideally, there should never be more than 10 open tournaments at any given time.

After that, the issue of invite spamming still needs to be addressed, but just for private tournaments. For starters, removing the "check all" button would help a lot. But then it would also need to be improved so you could easily invite the people you do want to invite, such as all clan members or all of your regular friends, etc. The UI for inviting/forwarding is really bad right now, as it doesn't even allow searching or filtering. This is going to be improved. The invite limit for tournaments will also likely be going up, as long as it can be done in a way that doesn't invoke more mass spamming.

Edited 2/10/2015 21:24:36

Tournaments do need to expire. Communication/options to save a tourney should also be present.

A significant issue with tournaments is that people join then months go by, the tourney finally starts, but in the interim, people have left WarLight and so their teammates get screwed.

I would suggest the following:
- Invitations expire one week after being sent
- Invitations cannot be sent to inactive players
(no active games in the past week && > 1w inactivity)
- After accepting an invite, if a player goes inactive,
he's removed from the tourney attendees
- Every month a player needs to confirm their desire to
attend the tourney - failure to do so (within a week)
is an auto-decline
- If a tourney has declined (or failed to improve) in
accepted members over a month, the tourney owner is
asked whether he wishes to cancel the tourney
- If a tourney owner is asked three consecutive months
and attendance has not gone up, the tourney is
cancelled.

I'm thinking about completely disabling invites for open tournaments. Why does someone need to be invited when the tournament is open? It's open to everyone -- just join. Inviting is just over-complicating things.

Open tournament don't fill unless you invite a load of people. It's the only option. An open tournament will take forever to fill if you don't invite anyone with the current state on the open tournaments page. Please don't do this until the problem with the current open tournaments page is fixed.

Edited 2/10/2015 22:14:45

"The goal is for all open tournaments to start quickly (within a day or two). Ideally, there should never be more than 10 open tournaments at any given time."

I can see that happen with small tournaments, but not with the large ones (250+). Especially the 1000 player ones-> Maybe a good idea to lower the max number of players? Most don't fill in a year anyway.

"it would also need to be improved so you could easily invite the people you do want to invite, such as all clan members or all of your regular friends, etc."
If you are going to make it so you can invite can members, why not make it so you can invite any clan (including your own), that would be so much easier (also for non-clan players). (Of course that might only be relevant for private tourneys, if you remove invites for the open ones).

Additionally I'm happy you're going to work on this; pretty much no matter what you do in the end it'll be a huge improvement :)

Ok, I have an idea. How about you take the 176 oldest, and most unfilled Tournaments and delete them, and re restrict tournaments to members, I think I get an invite to a tournament about 50 times a week, maybe I join one.

In the interface, players are presented with the option to create a 9 bracket (512 player) tournament. While most of us realize that a tournament that size is probably unrealistic, it can bias people into thinking that 64 players is a small tournament, which it really isn't. Even if nobody picks those high numbers, just having them there influences the size of new tournaments being created. I think the 8 (256 players) and 9 (512 players) bracket options should be removed, especially for double elimination.

Edited 2/11/2015 01:04:28

EDITED to look cleaner

I say,
Non-Members can have one active (started tournaments don't count) OPEN tourney, with a cap of 32 for Single elimination, 16 for double, and 10 for RR. (I have never needed to create any bigger, anyway)

Members, can have 3 active tourneys, cap of 256 for SE, 128 for DE and 20 (same as now) for RR.

512 players tournaments could be organized by Warzone, with a reward. (Makes them exclusive)

My point is that it takes to loooooong for a tournament to finish (not to mention start), thus the size of the tournument, is just as big, if not a bigger, issue then the waiting for the tournument to start.


NEW IDEA! Mapmakers (possible only thous who have the achievement for great map.) may host a tournament for their own map at any given time. (I feel confident they will use good templates, that work well with their maps)

NEW IDEA! Reduce Max boot time for multi-day tournaments, to something lime a MAX of 5 days (30 days, is pointless. May make one player happy, but the rest is annoyed )

NEW IDEA! Also consider to have all tournaments be NO VACATION.
((I would change the whole vac. system to Max of 5 days, and 10 times a year. OR max 7 and 7 times a year. Current is Max 10 , five times))

I hope to have smaller tournaments that starts and FINISHES within 3 weeks. (As a player I will win 1 of 512 tournaments if they all have this (512) size, aka I will never win. Smaller tournaments makes more players win more often, which = more fun = happy players = more players playing tournaments)


Also, as for why I play tournaments?

1. I can have games with "fun" settings created with players that become "better" as the tournament progresses. (Obviously not RR)
2. There is an Ultimate Goal (win tournament), that makes games more impotent then normal open games.
3. RR is great for team matches.
4. Not really important to me, but tournaments Do give extra points.

Edited 2/11/2015 01:21:43

Why is this issue only open tournaments? I am in lots of private ones where people invited a ton of inactive people that will never decline or join, so the tournament is hung up forever, or until the creator comes back and deletes it. It probably takes up no space on the server side, but it is still a problem because hundreds of people see the tournament on their list and it will never start.

A similar issue is a tournament takes a very long time to fill (again, this can be private). When it finally does, many people are inactive. I am playing at least 3 of those right now where 3-4 people on each side are booted EVERY game because it took so long to fill.

I just don't see why we should only be looking at open tournaments. That ignores the root causes and just treats a symptom.

Memele has a great point, one that has LOTS of votes on uservoice. We need more than one friend list. Then people would invite only the people they want (sub groups), rather than mass invite. There are several other good ideas in here. The point is don't mask the pain...cure it.

@ jz - 8 or 9 brackets is nothing if a solo tourney. Total players is the issue, not rounds.

@Tbest - Bad ideas...sorry. It would make clan league impossible. I have to create 11 tournaments for each division (4 divisions)...so 44 tournaments within the span of a week. All of those are pre-arranged, so they WILL fill up and start in a timely manner. But if you put a cap on tournaments, it would be a total mess to get a bunch of people to create all those.

Vacation idea...horrible. The issue is not tournaments that take long to play. The issue at hand is tournaments not started yet. You are basically not even on topic with that idea.

@ChrisCMU first post, this page

Quote Fizzer Page 2.

We can talk about private tournaments more in a different thread, but let's keep this thread about open tournaments, as the subject says.

Also see Fizzer's post on THIS PAGE

@ChrisCMU 2nd post
Actully, since we are talking about OPEN tournaments the clan league is not a problem.

Quote Fizzer, page 3

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.

As for the Vac. idea, I am well aware that it is not about the waiting for tournaments to start. I used the word "Consider", and double parenthesis to indicate that it was , strictly speaking, not on topic.

However, as Fizzer is doing a redesign of the tournaments I found the issue strongly related. For me players that are on vacation is worse then players that become booted. Players on Vac. bothers you for a long time, booted players bothers you once. Also I would expect there to be less booted players with the redesign completed, while the Vacations haven't been touched so far. Also note that I wanted max boot time for tournaments to be the same as max Vacation time.


EDIT: The current vacation system is unpopular, see Uservoice: Fariness of Vacations (No link, we don't need to get even more of topic xD). What I proposed is a hybrid of that proposal and the current system.

@All What do you think about the Mapmaker idea?

Edited 2/11/2015 00:59:58

@Fizzer
Is it a chance of this happening too? [Randomize teams in tournaments]
https://warlight.uservoice.com/forums/77051-warlight-features/suggestions/1142525-randomize-teams-in-a-tournament

it can bias people into thinking that 64 players is a small tournament, which it really isn't

64 player tournaments can be filled!
https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?TournamentID=12986

I'm in two 64 player tournaments, and they are relatively easy to fill. However, my experience with them isn't stellar. In one, my last game ended nearly three weeks ago, and I'm waiting for other players to catch up. In the other one, one game in round 1 has been going for 3 weeks, with no indication that it's going to end soon (because one player appears to be intentionally stalling).

I might join a 64 player single elimination in the future, but I probably will avoid double elimination because these ones are taking too long (and are too long of a commitment).

Edited 2/11/2015 00:41:12

^^ Same Issue I have, and tried to solve in my first post on this page.

it is fair to say you do not want a bad experience for a tournament creator, but what about the people who join, who wait for a tournament which never starts?

if auto-deleting/hiding is mentioned when the tournament is being created, this would lessen any annoyance on the creator's part, no? personally i would likely have given up on a tournament if it took more than a couple of weeks to fill, but that's just me.

i have not been in a lot of tournaments myself, but the largest ones i have seen work with any efficiency or even start, are either comprised of a lot of small teams, or not very many of larger teams

not seen one of those giant ones work yet, though again, i have not been a huge participant of these tournaments. what i am curious about are what the largest tournament sizes are that regularly get filled. i see 64 size tournaments that get filled somewhat often, but will a larger size work?

limiting the creation of tournaments to higher level players is not a bad idea i think, small tournaments (up to 16 people maybe?) should be ok to be made by mid-level players (40+?), though bigger ones (up to 64-80) should be be made by higher level players.

any point to making the giant tournament sizes available? i am willing to bet that 400 players (the max size for a tournament i think), or even 200, would be a fairly significant section of the player base.

why make tournament creation a member's only feature? if the idea is to have tournaments that are more likely to start, well, most of the people who i like to play with are not spenders as far as i know

what if there were prerequisites to be able to make a basic tournament (following one of several templates), unlockable at say, level 40, and then as you level up you unlock more add-ons/features/styles/sizes of tournament, similar to how level determines what you can do when making individual games right now?

an example of how this might work:
(level 40) you can make, maybe, a 8 or 16 1v1 tournament using any map currently unlocked
(level 45) you can make up to 32 man tournament, or 8 teams of 4, or 16 teams of 2 (along with any map)
(level 50) you can make invite only tournaments, all of the above, up to 64 players

these are all just thoughts I had after reading this thread late at night, and I am no expert at Warlight/Warzone, so take all this with a grain of salt lol

In my opinion, the tournaments that don't start are often there because either there are too many other tournaments this way, or, there are too many players to start. This issue is not exactly easy to fix but I do have an idea. 1, the player who makes the tournament has to invite at least half the players in. If by a certain number of days, the invited player does not or declines, then the creator must invite another player and cannot reinvite a player.

It sometimes happens in tournaments with teams, that the tournament does not start because many of the teams are so called "reserved". This can result in a never starting tournament. When one of these reserved teams gets someone they don't want, sometimes all the players meant to be in the team before the unwelcomed player joined leave. I also think that the tournaments should be like multiday games in the fact where the open seats will close and that the host will have to change the game in some way. This would at least solve the problem I mentioned first about the excessive abundance of tournaments. The max players also might want to be reduced because then, maybe reducing 512 to 128 or so to maximum to make the open seats and or players invited to tournaments. This would make the start time of the tourney much faster.

A final note, like multiplayer games, I doubt people want to join tournaments that they doubt that they can win. It might be a good idea to hide both, the number of players who have yet to join to start the game and who would be in the other teams. If this was an individual tournament, then one would not be able to know if any really good players would be in the tourney. This would not show whether the tournament would be a pushover or impossibly hard.

" You could also have a set time limit, such as when creating Real-Time open tournaments.

I thought of this too. However, the reason I don't like that is evident when you consider it from a player's perspective: If you join a tournament, and it never starts, that's a bad experience for the player. "


Fizzer, the same could be said from having open seats expire from regular games, but we do that regularly, and you seem to think that works... why couldn't the same thing be done for tournaments, just with a longer delay..?

*Btw, I am not in favor of this for regular games, as due to the diplomacy crowd, I can't really ever get a FFA started anymore with open seats, but it's been a regular feature that solves many problems presented*