Season 2- Changes? Suggestions?

Should we have another season of ROT

  • Yes

    Votes: 9 100.0%
  • No

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    9

Here is some other idea I have been thinking about.

Seasonal tournaments
These remain mostly unchanged and have two main goals: introduction of new games to the ROT players and determining the season champion for bragging rights.
  • 1 (or 2) game(s) per round, selected by a voting process
  • 6 rounds total (best 5 count)
  • 2 week deadline for scoring
  • game specific scoring rules and restrictions
  • earn batches by becoming seasonal champion and/or getting specific achievements.
The seasonal tournament ensures all (active) players are familiar with all the listed games and playing them competitively which provides context and creates appreciation for high scores.

At the time of the deadline for a specific round, the achieved high score of all players is locked and determines the score for the leaderboard for the running season. However, players who like that specific title can keep competing indefinitely for all time ROT records which are never locked but also don't contribute to the seasonal tournament. This promotes active participation in the ROT as a discovery tool since you can always beat the ruling high score later on.

Score tracking
Scores would be tracked on a simple site which acts as a front for a scoring database. This site and database will:
  • list all games featured so far in the ROT
  • lock the achieved ROT scores at the deadline
  • allows score submission both according to ROT rules and free scoring (only ROT rule submissions are taken into account for the seasonal tournament).
  • still tracks high scores even after the deadline
  • registers players such that each player can update their own score making the life of ROT maintainers easier.
  • Presents scores in a simple table format:
    Code:
    Tetris DX / GBC / 2011 Season 1 Round 5
    ----------+-----------+---------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------
    Username  | ROT score | All time high (ROT rules) | All time high (free)| proof (optional)
    ----------+-----------+---------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------
    Caine     |    171.023|        200.000 (as if :P )|             200.000 | http://imageshack.us/...
  • Link to a discussion thread with the scoring rules, trash-talk and/or general banter about the game.
This site would simplify the majority of the administration process involved and gives players a clear and direct overview of where they stand in the round (nobody would have to dig through maze of threads).

The main downside is the requirement to develop it first (doesn't need to be feature full right away). In principle it's just a database with some user registration and several web forms put on top. It could later on be extended to auto-generate an up-to-date leaderboard and/or support the voting process, but I see that as future extensions if the ROT becomes bigger and more successful. The site could eventually show player profiles with earned badges which can e.g. be linked to from forum signatures.

I think this idea will lower the threshold to participating in the ROT, since even if you can no longer win the seasonal tournament, you can still aim for claiming the first position in a particular game of your choice (allowing you to make up for missing a round) and discover new games while playing.
 
I just dropped in to say I haven't quit, I love this league and will be back in due course. My life's been turned upside down recently and I'm in the process of moving across the country and starting afresh. I skimmed this thread quickly and would like to add my two pence:

I'm still against the idea of money prizes. Maybe once it's the world famous ROT that's a possibility, but not now. I'm all for badges of honour though, and don't see a problem with small donated prizes either.

I don't see the point of making screen shots necessary, surely these can be faked/people could cheat anyway?

Another vote for one famous and one hidden gem here, sounds good.

Maybe dropping down to one game per round while there's not so many playing isn't a bad idea, or how about if participants can play both games? That could make things more tactical as well: do you spend all your time trying to top the leader board on one game, or aim for midway on both?

At the moment I'm all for increasing the amount of dropped rounds :lol:

@Caine - I like the idea of all time scores that keep going even after the round has finished. I could take my rightful place as King of Willow!

@Levi - I would love another round of Mario Kart without Thwomps! Maybe we could all vote on a track?

I should be back in a month, maybe two, once I'm all settled; I really hope it's still here to come back to :)
 
Tickles said:
I don't see the point of making screen shots necessary, surely these can be faked/people could cheat anyway?
No, they should not be necessary. Having support for them is fine, but they should not be required.

@Caine - I like the idea of all time scores that keep going even after the round has finished. I could take my rightful place as King of Willow!
The ROT, where rivalries are born :p
 
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If we're going for the famous/non-famous game split idea (yay) then I think that means we need to play two games at a time. The idea being that at all times, anyone can play the famous game they've probably played before, but if they fancy something a bit more leftfield where perhaps the competition might not be as fierce, they can go wildcard. If we play one at a time and alternate, we're saying you have to play games you might not be interested in playing (either played them too much in the past, or not interested in playing some weirdy beardy game on the Colecovision) or you forefit alternate rounds.

I also like the idea of having non-counting rounds, where your lowest scores are ignored for the purposes of final tallying. That fits with the part time ethos - we all have real lives to be getting on with, and if we can only put in a token effort in some round that shouldn't be penalised against someone with more free time perhaps, who can dedicate significant time to each round.
 
MonkeyChops,

To avoid really hijacking the thread:
I don't see the Russian River Brewing Company listed on the breweries list for that beer fest, so no Pliny unfortunately. It's very hard to get anywhere outside of the Rockies / West Coast. I had only ONE when I was in Colorado a few weeks ago because that's all I could find. It's hard to get even out there. It was ranked as being the best IPA on both ratebeer.com and beeradvocate.com for a long time. I think it deserves the respect as it is a delicious beer! I'm very jealous that you're going to that, by the way. I recently went to Brewvival in Charleston, but it was nowhere near that big! One thing that does bug me about that festival is that AnheiserBush / MillerCoors is going to be there. They need not be anywhere near real beer in my opinion. I mean, I'm no beer snob. I'll have a Coors Lite on the beach or in the sun, but if I'm elsewhere and I have a choice, I'm not drinking fizzy, yellow, flavorless beer.

The stout is going to have to age for at least two months before we can bottle it, and then it will still be a minimum of three more weeks before it would really be good to go I think. I actually do not remember which hops we used. This was a cheap ($20!) kit from Austin Homebrew Supply, so we couldn't resist (but we doctored it up a little bit all the same). The Pliny clone had four different kinds of hops in it!

I like all beers pretty much any time of the year, but I probably wouldn't have a stout on the beach or even during the day. We didn't do it as an AG, but we (me and my brew buddies) did do a minimash using a nylon bag. We're trying to get away from using extracts altogether and just do all grain. We use a turkey fryer for the boil and just your basic equipment otherwise. We haven't spent a lot of money on equipment just yet. I just wanted to get into brewing and really enjoy some of my own beers before investing a lot of money in it first. I've really only been doing this since January, but man is it a blast! I think the next thing we will invest in is a wort chiller. We'll probably build it rather than buy one. Temperature control has been an issue for us during fermentation. What do you do to combat that?

Until we can get a better setup, I think we're going to be doing a Brew-In-A-Bag setup for the AG brews. It's really not hard to do, but it still gets that all-grain flavor. Mmmm.

What sort of equipment do you use? What are your favorite styles to brew? Ever post on HomeBrewTalk.com?

Caine said:
Here is some other idea I have been thinking about.
... Lots of text ...

This. Great ideas here.
 
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I agree with levi and David that there shouldn't be any real prizes.

Tickles said:
@levi - I would love another round of Mario Kart without Thwomps! Maybe we could all vote on a track?
How about 3 tracks?
 
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So are we dead in the water? It's been over a month now with no chatter.

Is there any interest in continuing the league?
 
I am still very interested!
Especially if the games run on my
open2x.gif
. :D
 
Been dragging my feet since I still don't have my pandora back yet. Is it all up to me to get the ball rolling again? I don't mind being admin (although that would be easier with mod abilities for this sub-forum,) but do we still have our 'keeps?

[edit]also, anyone know who to talk to about getting some kind of badge or in-profile ranking system going?
 
I'm still around and still interested. I heard from others on the OpenPandora boards that they would be interested as well, so it would be good to announce it there too. So, what's the verdict? Are we going to change anything?
 
I think the main changes we should do are:
1) have the "1 popular, 1 wild card" game nomination style
2) have some kind of in-forum reward system.

Should we do sign-ups to make things more official or just leave it as the come-and-go-as-you-please system that its been? People could still sign up and start playing at anytime, it would just be a bit more official and we could make sign-up requirements include the nomination of 1 game for each category (popular and wild). But the last thing I want to do is make it to cumbersome to join, it's already a very small league.

[edit] I almost forgot, the multi-votes-per-person is also a great idea, I'll try to gather up all the change ideas and maybe I'll do another poll. Then we can lay down the rules get back to some retro fun :D

[edit2] I just reread this topic. Caine, your idea for the ROT website is a good one, do you have the skill or time to pull it off for this season or should we just push forward with keeping everything on gp32x? I really like the idea of keeping an all-time top score each game. We could, perhaps, still do that in-forum with a separate topic for all time scores. Of course that just adds to the 'keeps chores but would also keep this sub-forum active and attract new players.

If we go with all-time top scores, would we only do it with games that have been played and only after the league score was finalized?

We will need a good amount of topics to start the new season:
1) rules, sign-up, leaderboard topic (should we seperate any of these?)
2) Nomination thread
3) Vote thread
4) All-Time Top Score Thread
5) Current round thread

Am I forgetting anything?
 
MonkeyChops said:
Should we do sign-ups to make things more official or just leave it as the come-and-go-as-you-please system that its been? People could still sign up and start playing at anytime, it would just be a bit more official and we could make sign-up requirements include the nomination of 1 game for each category (popular and wild).
I didn't nominate any games last season and only voted on a single one (I think), so I'm not a big proponent of that. The ROT is mainly a method for solving the "what to play" problem for me. I would say, if registration makes life easier for the score-keeps then make it so, otherwise keep it as-is.

Caine, your idea for the ROT website is a good one, do you have the skill or time to pull it off for this season or should we just push forward with keeping everything on gp32x?
Hmmm. The backend isn't the problem, but I lack the routine for developing web front-ends and I most definitely suck at web-design. Furthermore, my time is really limited, so I cannot pull this off for this season.
 
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I'm still interested in participating, but lately RL has just been far too busy for me to keep up with everything I wanted to.
 
I'm not gone either.

In my opinion the most important things we have to do for season 2 are:
  • Making the league easier to understand and/or less confusing.
    • What about giving every season a codename?
    • The current number of threads with long names is probably rather confused to new participants. I propose the following naming scheme which hopefully reduces confusion and makes the thread's titles (+descriptions) more self-explanatory.
      • Round-centric threads (new ones every round):

        • Topic title: "--- Score Submissions --- Round i of x (Season n: "CODENAME")"
          Topic description: "Deadline: [DATE]"

          Topic title: "Vote Games For Next Round: i+1 of x (Season n: "CODENAME")"
          Topic description: "Choose between these games picked from the "Game Nomination Thread"."

          Topic title: "Round i of x (Season n: "CODENAME"): Sign-Up"

          [OPTIONAL]Topic title: "Round i of x (Season n: "CODENAME"): Any Other Topic" (e.g. "Round i of x (Season n: "CODENAME"): Legal Sources For Games")
      • Generic threads (stay the same all the time):

        • Topic title: "Game Nomination Thread (All Seasons[?])"
          Topic description: A weighted biological number generator will make some of these games available for voting.

          Topic title: "DON'T PANIC: The Official ROT Guide (All Seasons)"

          • The first post of this thread explains what other posts there are in the thread. There is one post for rules, one that explains scoring, one that explains scheduling, one for FAQ.
          Topic title: "LEADERBOARDS"

          • The first post of this thread contains links to the other posts in the thread. The second post contains the all-time leaderboard. For each new season, add a post that contains that season's leaderboard.
  • Letting people know the league exists.
    • It's probaly a good idea to advertise the season /once when it begins, on boards.openpandora.org , gp32x.de/board and the local boards, on other retro forums(?) and on blogs. As long as this is a one time advertisement I think it's okay because there are probably some people out there who'd like to know about ROT.
    • Create small banners that people can put in their signatures if they want to do so.
 
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"Letting last round players know the next round still exists"

(assuming it goes forward :)

I think I'm hosed right out, barely any time at all anymore and only going to get worse for me :)

But I want to watch from the sidelines! :)

jeff
 
recently got my pandora back and I'm thinking about starting up the league again. I don't think I call pull it off myself, any of the 'keeps still around?

Anyone still interested in this?

I'm seriously thinking that moving this league to the official pandora boards might be best. Partially because those boards are more active, partially because no one has posted in the rot forum here for almost 3 months, and partially because it looks like we could get forum icon rewards setup there easily as that is in the works there right now as a reward for donating. Thoughts?
 
I'm guilty of not seeing the last league through, due to family circumstances and no RL time but I'd certainly be interested in another league though and I second your intention to perhaps move it to the other consoles section of the Pandora boards, as frankly its darn quiet over this way these days.

The ROT was a great way to discover new titles and to have incentives to get properly into them. Congrats to Caine for the 1st seasons win and what a quality trinket that graced your winning hands thanks to Prometheus.
 
Hi!

MonkeyChops said:
I don't think I call pull it off myself, any of the 'keeps still around?

Anyone still interested in this?
I'm still subscribed to this topic. I'll help make the league work.

While I think that giving people a winner badge which they can put into their signature would work very well (it is very likely that abuse would be quite apparent), I also think that moving the ROT to boards.openpandora.org wouldn't hurt.

Regarding if anyone is interested: it's probably best to ask the potential players. Without them, a second season won't work. Let's discuss any further changes to the league here (I guess there aren't too many), and as soon as we discussed any potential important suggestions (do you have any?), I will start a thread at boards.openpandora.org to ask people if they are interested. In that thread, we can also ask for a codename for the second season.


-----

In addition to what I already wrote in this thread, here is another suggestion:

What if we told people that they can contact anyone of us if they want to donate some kind of prize for the winner, and we would keep it secret until the season is over? Maybe we would get some prizes, and this would also allow us to communicate with the donators before the league is over, e.g. in case there will be enough prizes to split them up on first, second and third place, for instance.

During the first season, I was actually thinking about what I could donate as a prize for the winner, but I couldn't really find anything that was likely to fit every type of winner. For instance, a single SNES game or movie DVD would not necessarily have been a good prize for a particular person. Prometheus' prize, which I didn't know anything of, was much better. If several people donate, then this is not really a problem (well, /if/ several people donate), so telling people that they can secretly donate prizes might actually increase the number of prizes for several reasons.
 
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