Team discussion

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

Original proposal:

TEAMS

Individuals sign up for PXFIRE and state which sections they are likely to participate in.
At the end of sign ups, members are distributed semi-randomly into teams with an effort made to spread skill among the different sections.
Where possible, each team will have the same number of members.
Each team will have a leader and possibly coleader. Those interested in leading a team can indicate this on their sign up form. Team leaders will be chosen by the PXFIRE leaders.
Once members are assigned to a team, the team works together to develop a name and theme. The leaders will be in charge of pulling it together and making sure their team is ready by the start date.
Members who join after PXFIRE begins will be assigned randomly to a team, keeping the numbers as even as possible.


So our idea was to operate on a draft kind of basis where teams would be random but have even numbers to make it as fair as possible. We would try and distribute people among the teams so that every team has people to enter every event, for example, make sure every team has someone interested in entering sprite art.

We have identified some issues with this, such as certain members not wanting to be on the same team as members they don't get along with and that even if teams have equal numbers of people, not everyone is going to participate to an equal extent and some might not be very active at all.

The other option is to have teams like in previous WARs where people can sign up for whichever one they want, but there will be a cap on members. Like if Team A and B have 3 members each and Team C has 2 members, then A and B cannot accept new members until Team C also has 3. The problem with this is that some teams will be more popular than others no matter what, and people might be forced to join a team they don't want to be on because the other teams are full. Or they will wait around for Team A and B to open up and then no one will join C and we get to a standstill. xD Not having a cap is not really something we want to do at this point as it was the biggest issue with the last WAR and caused too much drama. xD

I still think the original proposal of the draft can work. Every option will have a downside unfortunately, so we just have to do what we can and then use this experience to make it better for next year.

Any thoughts or ideas? :)

[Caite-chan]

I think we should have 3 teams that people can be drafted into. We should have them fill out a form and PM them to one or two people like Neo and Sarah for example and they can say who they don't want to be on a team with and give a good reason for it. That way no one will know and people won't feel anxious about posting it in public. The only ones that will know are the leaders of those making the teams.

We also need to make it perfectly clear that we can't make everyone happy and that you should still work with the team you're placed on. If you join a team you should participate and help them out and not disappear because of one or two people.

This is something we are trying out and that nothing will be perfect no matter how much we try. We just ask that people work with us as best as possible. We can always fix things for next time but we can't know what may or may not work if we don't try things.

[Morzone]

The draft sounds fine to me.

Though I think before we decide on the number of teams, we should find a way to pinpoint, or at least get a good estimate, of the number of people who will actually join and participate.

[AD]

I like the sound of a draft. I actually love it.

And i am pretty sure we will get a good number of people to join. Positivity coming from a pessimist, you can count on it folks

[Soups]

I vote for a draft. While both methods may have their flaws, the draft's flaws aren't as troubling as the latter option. A draft creates fairness and prevents the construction of super-teams. Like Caite said, it would be wise to have those who sign-up for PXFIRE message the PXFIRE leaders if they don't wish to work with certain individuals... and it would have to be a legitimate reason (gotta' learn to suck things up sometimes).

[Neo Emolga]

I think we should have 3 teams that people can be drafted into. We should have them fill out a form and PM them to one or two people like Neo and Sarah for example and they can say who they don't want to be on a team with and give a good reason for it. That way no one will know and people won't feel anxious about posting it in public. The only ones that will know are the leaders of those making the teams.

We also need to make it perfectly clear that we can't make everyone happy and that you should still work with the team you're placed on. If you join a team you should participate and help them out and not disappear because of one or two people.

This is something we are trying out and that nothing will be perfect no matter how much we try. We just ask that people work with us as best as possible. We can always fix things for next time but we can't know what may or may not work if we don't try things.

Boom, definitely all of this, though I'll second what Morzone said and say let's wait until we see how many people are interested. If there's a lot, we could go for four or five teams. I'd say play it as if there's going to be roughly seven people on each team. If we start getting more than twenty-one people joining in on this, I'd say let's maybe add some extra teams in.

I would like to try drafting, though. Draft, and then have members talk out how they would like the team to be, just so as long as the basic theme is flexible for just about any kind of RP situation. Once they see how the RP is created, then they can decide exactly how they'd like the team to fit into the setting and what the goals would be like.

[Morzone]

Has the RP planning started yet at all? (even if its just a basic idea in someone's head?)

So for each team we'll have:
1 leader
1 co-leader
5(ish) normal members (totaling 7ish, which will be balanced out by admins during the draft process)

They'll need a team name, theme, and I think each team should have some kind of art piece to display (probably in the signature)
The leader I'm assuming would make the team's personal thread...

what other rules should we have for teams? or are those basics enough?

[Neo Emolga]

Has the RP planning started yet at all? (even if its just a basic idea in someone's head?)

So for each team we'll have:
1 leader
1 co-leader
5(ish) normal members (totaling 7ish, which will be balanced out by admins during the draft process)

They'll need a team name, theme, and I think each team should have some kind of art piece to display (probably in the signature)
The leader I'm assuming would make the team's personal thread...

what other rules should we have for teams? or are those basics enough?

We haven't uttered a peep about the RP. The big thing is we're not sure who will actually be judging it. Judge applications haven't started and I think it might be best if the person who is the judge leads the discussion on it and toss in some ideas to build things on.

Also, I like that setup for the team. People will apply to be leader, but the leader selects who their co-leader will be. Then, once all the members are drafted, they talk about their ideas of what they want to do for the team as you said. But yeah, it would make sense for the leader to create the thread so they can edit the first post and do their own organization.

But yeah, first, I'd say get the interest thread up and get an idea of how many people want to get in on this. Then we can go from there regarding how many teams we'll have and then follow-up with team leader applications.

[Morzone]

We haven't uttered a peep about the RP. The big thing is we're not sure who will actually be judging it. Judge applications haven't started and I think it might be best if the person who is the judge leads the discussion on it and toss in some ideas to build things on.

Also, I like that setup for the team. People will apply to be leader, but the leader selects who their co-leader will be. Then, once all the members are drafted, they talk about their ideas of what they want to do for the team as you said. But yeah, it would make sense for the leader to create the thread so they can edit the first post and do their own organization.

But yeah, first, I'd say get the interest thread up and get an idea of how many people want to get in on this. Then we can go from there regarding how many teams we'll have and then follow-up with team leader applications.

Should we find judges before doing the interest check? Or would it be enough to just have a solidified list of all the different categories? Since we'll have to know what people are likely to participate in for the drafting and balancing.

[AD]

TeamPeasantsTakingHomeTheGold


My question is, what would the Co-Leader be tasked with doing?

[Morzone]

TeamPeasantsTakingHomeTheGold


My question is, what would the Co-Leader be tasked with doing?

Mostly just be the leader when the actual leader isn't around I guess. I'm sure the teams will find things for their co-leader to do, especially if we have a team event.

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

Should we find judges before doing the interest check? Or would it be enough to just have a solidified list of all the different categories? Since we'll have to know what people are likely to participate in for the drafting and balancing.
I think once we have finalised the list of events and how judging/scoring should be done, we can open judge applications. :) Best to get them done ASAP, especially for RP which takes a lot of planning.


TeamPeasantsTakingHomeTheGold


My question is, what would the Co-Leader be tasked with doing?
I figured the co-leader could help with organising the thread and stuff. It just gives more people the opportunity to be in a leadership role if they don't get picked to be a team leader But if the teams are small we might not even need co-leaders haha.

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

I thought it was better to post this sooner rather than later so we can get an idea of how much activity we may actually have for the event and then adjust sections accordingly. :)

Let me know what you guys think!




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Sign Ups!

Hi everyone! It's time to register to participate in PXFIRE 2017! PXFIRE is our new forum game where members will be sorted into teams and participate in different events such as art, writing and showdown battling! You can earn points for your team just be participating!

About PXFIRE!
PXFIRE will run over 4 weeks. We are hoping to be ready to start by July! During that time there will be 8 main events: drawing, graphic art, spriting, roleplaying, creative writing, comics, showdown battling, humour. Enter the events to earn points for your team! At the end of each event, the judge will grade each entry and give feedback. The judge will then distribute points so that each entry gets at least 1 point, with the "best" entries recieving a larger share of points. We will also have additional events like puzzles which give out points for participating, so everyone can join in! Which team will come out on top?!

How do teams work?
To make things as fair as possible, we are going to sort members (mostly) randomly into teams, taking into account who will be entering which events. The PXFIRE planners will also select a team leader for each team. Once everyone has been assigned to a team, your team will work together to come up with a name and theme! Teams will get a cool banner in their postbit as well as a custom token! It will be the Team Leader's job to finalise the team's name and make sure everything is ready to go by the start date!

If you have concerns about being on a team with a specific member(s) you do not get along with, then please PM me, Pokemon Trainer Sarah, and I will do my best to ensure that doesn't happen. Please only do this if it is a serious issue that will impact your enjoyment of the event. :) We want everyone to have fun!

Sign up form!
To sign up for the event, just fill out this form and post it here.


Username:

Which sections will you definitely enter?

Which sections will you maybe enter?

How often will you be able to visit the forum during July?:

Would you like to be a team leader?

FIRST ROUND SIGN UPS CLOSE JUNE 11TH
Sign ups will briefly closed so that we may sort people into teams. Anyone who joins after this will be randomly distributed among the teams, keeping the numbers as even as possible.

We hope to have everyone sorted into teams by June 18th! Woohoo!

[Soups]

The sooner the better. I like it.

[Neo Emolga]

Everything looks good. I'm guessing we'll set up the teams with the leaders first, THEN sort everyone else into them randomly? I think as long as we do that, we'll be fine. I wouldn't do EVERYONE at random first, because then you might have a team where no one really wants to be the leader and that might be a little funky.

Besides that, I'm cool with it. Hopefully we get truckloads of people. :3

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

Everything looks good. I'm guessing we'll set up the teams with the leaders first, THEN sort everyone else into them randomly? I think as long as we do that, we'll be fine. I wouldn't do EVERYONE at random first, because then you might have a team where no one really wants to be the leader and that might be a little funky.

Besides that, I'm cool with it. Hopefully we get truckloads of people. :3

Yeah I figure the team leaders are the first thing we'll need to decide on and then distribute the rest. :)

[Soups]

Everything looks good. I'm guessing we'll set up the teams with the leaders first, THEN sort everyone else into them randomly? I think as long as we do that, we'll be fine. I wouldn't do EVERYONE at random first, because then you might have a team where no one really wants to be the leader and that might be a little funky.

Besides that, I'm cool with it. Hopefully we get truckloads of people. :3

You're right. We can sort out the leaders and then play the sorting game.

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

Alright I posted the sign up thread. Fingers crossed that we get enough interest! :)

[Neo Emolga]

I checked and we have 21 sign ups (it's almost the end of the eleventh and I'm not really expecting too many more to show up). I'd say that's pretty good! Was hoping for a bit more, but hey, we can definitely work with this.

Now here comes the kicker.

If we go with three teams, each team will have seven people.

If we go with four teams, each team will have five people (one will have six).

We also have these four people who definitely want to be leaders (and not just as a "maybe" or "only if I need to"):

Bulbasaur
LKWayvern
Shruikan
Caite-chan

If we go with four teams, easy cheesy, we can go with all four. But if we only go with three teams, we need to decide which three of the four we go with as leaders. I'd actually have a tough time deciding because I think all four of them would be great leaders and it would be cool to see what kinds of teams will get created.

So it's really a matter of deciding whether to go with three or four teams. What are your thoughts?

[Spiderc]

Personally I think four teams is a little bit better than having three and since it's an option we might want to go that route. I feel like with just three teams it feels like less of a competition between the different teams and more of one between individual people. Plus that way we don't need to single out one of the people who actually wanted to be a captain and say that they didn't get the job which would stink for them.

The one downside is that each team would just have 5 people then so a team could get in trouble if they have someone who suddenly goes inactive or if the team has too many people focused on a particular event. I guess it's partially up to the leader to make sure the second doesn't happen while they're drafting their team, but there's not too much we can do about the former.

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

I don't really think 5 is enough for a team. We can't rely on everyone to actually enter stuff and plenty of people were only interested in one or two sections... Plus if the teams are a bit bigger I think there'll be more team spirit and motivation. One of the people who wanted to lead a team can colead with someone else so I don't think that's a big worry. Just my opinion anyway.

[Morzone]

I dunno, I've seen small team at events that can generate a lot of spirit...

I don't know, If I'm honest. I agree, 5 is a bit low for a team, but at the same time I like there being more than 3 teams... especially since there were 4 people interested in being a leader.

Maybe do a little last minute advertising reminding people that the deadline for sign-ups is coming? I've found it can push out a few last minute sign-ups sometimes. Maybe we could get enough for 6 per team with 4 teams.

[Soups]

I don't really think 5 is enough for a team. We can't rely on everyone to actually enter stuff and plenty of people were only interested in one or two sections... Plus if the teams are a bit bigger I think there'll be more team spirit and motivation. One of the people who wanted to lead a team can colead with someone else so I don't think that's a big worry. Just my opinion anyway.

I second this. I'd rather we run with three teams, seven members each.

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

I'll mention everyone who's been online in the last few days on the sign up thread and see if we can get some more people to make a 4th team... But considering we can't rely on everyone being active I fear having 5-people teams may lead to only 2-3 people being active and then feeling demotivated if they need to carry the whole team. D:

[Neo Emolga]

I'll mention everyone who's been online in the last few days on the sign up thread and see if we can get some more people to make a 4th team... But considering we can't rely on everyone being active I fear having 5-people teams may lead to only 2-3 people being active and then feeling demotivated if they need to carry the whole team. D:

Yeah, that's true. Let's just stick with three teams then.

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

Well we have 27 sign ups which means there's enough for 3 teams of 9. I think that's a pretty good number.

Alternatively there is enough for 3 teams of 7 and 1 team of 6.

I had a go at sorting people into teams. The way I did it was group everyone into groups of 3 with people who shared their stated participation level (high, med, low) and also who stated they would participate in similar events. Then for eachg roup of 3, I used RNG to randomly assign the letters A, B and C to each person in the group. I then checked over the list to see if every team had someone interested in participating in every event. Surprisingly the random sorting was pretty good and I only had to move a couple people around to make the teams look quite fair. It is obviously impossible to make everything completely even though, as we don't even know how much people will actually join in.

So with all that done, here is what I came up with:

TEAM ATEAM BTEAM C
arnisdBulbasaur*Chakramaster
Arrow-JolteonCaite-Chan*Coru
azura evleyDeath's SpookLKWayvern*
Noblejanobii*MorzoneMidnight Sun
Pokemon Trainer SarahNeo EmolgaSacred Fire
Shruikan*ninjaskarmorySteel Lunpara
Soupspokemon trainer FelixSuicune's Fire
Spidercsammy0295Trainer17*
The Nonexistent TazzScytherwolfVelocity
* = team leaders

For those interested, here is the breakdown of number of people participating per event based on sign ups. The number in brackets are "maybes".

TEAM ATEAM BTEAM C
RP2 (4)2 (1)4 (3)
Writing2 (4)3 (3)1 (2)
Sprite art1 (3)0 (2)2 (2)
Drawn art5 (1)4 (2)5 (0)
Graphic art0 (0)1 (1)1 (1)
Showdown2 (0)2 (2)2 (2)
Humour1 (1)2 (3)1 (2)
Comics1 (1)2 (2)1 (3)
TOTAL14 (14)16 (16)17 (15)

Every time I tried to rearrange people to make it more even, it just made it worse. x_x So I think this is the best we are gonna get.

Are you guys good with this? Feel free to share any concerns or even contact me in private if you don't want to post here. :) Thanks guys, let's try and get this sorted quick. I'm gonna be away most of next week and I think it'd be good to get the teams posted by tomorrow so that we can start the discussions on team names etc. and build hype for the main event!

The spreadsheet I used:
UsernameParticipation levelSections enteringSections maybe entering
Sacred Fire?ShowdownHumour
The Nonexistent Tazz?RP
MorzoneHighRPDrawn artWritingGraphic artHumour
Pokemon Trainer SarahHighGraphic artDrawn artComicsWritingSprite art
SoupsHighWritingRPHumour
Steel LunparaHighDrawn artRPSprite artComicsHumourWriting
Suicune's FireHighWritingDrawn artSprite artHumourComicsShowdown
Arrow-JolteonLowDrawn artWriting
sammy0295LowDrawn artSprite artComics
Midnight SunLow+RPWriting
arnisdMediumDrawn artComicsRPWriting
azura evleyMediumDrawn artSprite artRP
Bulbasaur*MediumHumourShowdown
Caite-Chan*MediumHumorShowdownWritingArt
Death's SpookMediumRPWriting
LKWayvern*MediumRPDrawn artComicsShowdownWriting
ninjaskarmoryMediumDrawn art WritingShowdown
pokemon trainer FelixMediumDrawn artComicsHumourShowdown
ScytherwolfMediumDrawn artComicsWritingRP
SpidercMediumShowdownHumourSprite art
Trainer17MediumHumourShowdownGraphic art
VelocityMediumDrawn artComicsRPWritingSprite art
ChakramasterMedium+RP
CoruMedium+Drawn artGraphic artSprite art
Neo EmolgaMedium+Graphic artWritingRPHumourDrawn artComics
NoblejanobiiMedium+WritingSprite artRPDrawn art
Shruikan*Medium+Drawn artShowdownRPWritingComics

[Neo Emolga]

Wow, holy crap, I wasn't expecting such a thorough breakdown but that's awesome how you prepared all that!

I think that's as good as it's going to get. I can't wait to see what kinds of teams get made out of this. >:3

[LKWayvern]

On the one hand I was hoping I'd be the only one willing to be a team leader so halfway through PXFire air could reveal I'd been secretly manipulating all the teams.
On the other hand, I'm glad I have a co-leader, that's bound to make things marginally less hectic XD
Well, I'm even more excited for War now~
May the best team win! translation: prepare to go DOWN

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

Glad you guys like it! I'm pretty excited now! xD

[Caite-chan]

I just assumed we would pick leaders first and then I would sit that part out but this looks great.

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

Since there have been no objections, I'm gonna post the teams now. I'm gonna be away until Friday so if you guys could do your best to pump up the teams and get everyone excited, that would be awesome!