Team System Discussion and Ideas

[HKim]

Okay, okay. Let me go ahead and post this.

I'm sorry for the drama and the lack of communication. I'm sorry for insults and jabs. I'm sorry for this whole mess. This is my fault for not taking everything into consideration and I apologize for the difficulties we're experiencing.

I'd like... try and reorient the conversation, if possible. I'd like you all to join me in this positive direction of conversation. I ask everyone to remain civil and respective. We're all Pokemon fans here. We all care very much about a franchise that means so much to us and has helped define our lives. I'm glad that's what unites us because, to me, Pokemon has always represented an amazing world full of wonder, love, and adventure.

So, in spirit of what Pokemon means, let's also proceed in love and understanding.


It is probably too late to implement any meaningful system now, so I'd like to move this discussion to focus on next year and what we'd like to do differently.

Yes, I know that a year is far off, yet it probably won't hurt to discuss things now. At the very least, we can share ideas in preparation for what will happen.


I think that there have been a number of suggestions that we can try next year and I'll outline what I've heard. Please feel free to discuss what you'd like to see next year and comment on the ideas.


1. Team Cap

This idea focuses on having a hard or soft cap on the number of members on a team. A hard cap would be a set maximum that doesn't change while a soft cap would raise the maximum based on the number of people participating in the war/number of teams.


2. Bonus Points

Ash originally brought this up and I suggested an alternative. Essentially, smaller teams get more points during the course of the War in comparison to larger teams. Either the points small teams win are multiplied by some ratio, or they receive a set number of points each week.


3. Post-Team Draft System

This method involves members creating teams, then drafting people who sign up to participate in the War to their team. Thus creating equal teams.


4. Pre-Team Draft System

Elysia suggested this idea (though it seems familiar). Essentially, team leaders are selected and they draft members who sign up for the War. The members are asked to get to know each other in the team and to come up with a theme and name they can all agree on.



Obviously there are positives and negatives to each of the ideas. And there are other ideas I didn't list. I welcome all discussion, and I ask that everyone please remain civil during this discussion. Thank you.

[bronislav84]

Team cap should be soft. 10 to start, and raised by 5 each time when all teams have the cap.

I'm for bonus points, but it needs to be counted by the Leaders or tally person. For having less headache for Judges, we should still be giving out 6 points, just that the one doing the tally multiplies the points after if a team is small or not. This needs to be done fairly, so a smaller team is getting similar multiplied counts but not completely ending up leaps and bounds ahead of teams that are getting double or triple normal multiplier-less points.

I'm vehemently against drafts. Harry you and I know how this worked. People don't get on the teams they want, cry, and don't participate. Then there's people who need a certain category, and snipe someone who doesn't want to be on their team when the person is out of refusals. The person HAS to be on that team, and just doesn't participate because they don't like the team.

[WinterVines]

If nobody likes the formal team cap, there can perhaps be some capping in the sections themselves.

1. Limit submissions (# or %) allowed by each team per event (if applicable)

For example, if you have 20 members, only 5 may post in any one section if its a submittable type of event. This would probably not be applicable to RP or URPG.

2. Limit scoring to one person per team

This way, one team doesn't take all the points categories, which allows points to be distributed to other teams regardless of their team size.

---

I was talking to DR the other day and he also brought up splitting some of the bigger teams, but that's probably an unfavorable solution.

The two big issues that we have to try to worry about with all these solutions seem to be:
-Playing with friends (wanting to avoid splitting certain people up)
-Overextending (as in participating in too many sections and becoming stressed/burned out since nobody else available)

---

And please, please, can we avoid the "work harder" statements? They are pretty hurtful to those of us who have a lot going on and can't dedicate all of our time to the forum. I'd really like to see us come to a solution, which will have problems no matter what course, without insulting each other. I'll be honest and say that overall, I feel unwanted here, discouraged from participating in any event other than the one I originated from. It's been more stressful than exciting, and I do get those in-crowd/out-crowd vibes just from reading the thread. But we can find a solution to these issues that are brought up without attacking each other. It may not be this year, and probably won't be, but it's better to address this problem now, while WAR is still young on this particular forum, than wait for it to snowball.

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

The only thing that worries me about limiting submissions is how do you choose who gets to submit? Most likely you pick the people you think will win, and then some poor person never gets a chance to participate because they might not be as "good" as others. :( Same kind of thing with the cap and having to reject members in favour of others.

I think at least one time there was a WAR where potential leaders could make up a team and submit it for consideration. Then everyone would vote for which teams they would actually like to have in the WAR. The top x teams were picked to compete and then everyone could pick one of those teams to join. At least that way it's more likely that there will be enough members wanting to join each of the selected teams?

[HKim]

I honestly like the draft, point, and cap ideas. I think they can all work. Even with a few modifications, they could be made more acceptable to most people.

It's not like we haven't done this in previous Wars. We'd simply need to iterate a bit.

[Aberforth]

Just throwing my opinion in there, but I like the Pre-Team draft idea. Perhaps it is just because I don't know that many people around here, but I think it would be a good opportunity to get to know new people. There could always be some people signing up as pairs if they want to be with their friends... :P

[bronislav84]

Pre-draft might work, but members free to be choosing teams after that. I'm still vehemently against all out drafts though. That year with the draft I personally consider a disaster. The voting didn't work out so well. Voting is totally a popularity contest.

[Neo Emolga]

To be honest, I think every method has various pros and cons, and I know most of them we've given a try in one way or another.

There really is no perfect method, but I suppose we can take a different route next time for variance.

[brandon_g]

Well I think proposing that a team can have only a certain number of people competing in a section. I also would like to propose the possibility that a small team of maybe less then 10 people can be given double points for thier small number of people? I think thats only fair and evens out the turf while people can still join where they want. :D

Just my proposals.

-Brandon


Per our skype conversation HKim here was my suggestion :).

[Felly]

First, I'm going to start off by apologizing for any trouble I may have caused. By no means was I, nor any of my friends from URPG who posted here, looking for some sort of freebie or a larger team. We wanted balance between the larger teams and the smaller teams; we felt outdone by them, and we wanted something done about it. Now that we've gotten the anger out of us, hopefully we can work towards a conclusion to create some balance for next year's WAR and maybe even this year's too!

Of the ideas presented, I think either the idea Harry posted about point bonuses and/or the idea Winter posted about limiting scoring to one person per team would be the best for this year. We can't really do anything about the imbalance of team numbers without ripping teams to shreds, and I don't want to see anyone forced off a team to give us the balance we want; if someone leaves a team and goes to another, it should be of their own free will. I think for the limiting scoring to one person per team thing, it shouldn't be about picking and choosing who's most likely to win but instead allowing all of the members of a team to submit in a category, and then the judge picks the best ones of the ones presented to him/her. Five people could still submit art from Team Trainer as they normally would, but only one of them would get the points, even if all five of them had the top scores. For example, if in art, the judge gives the top five people from Team Trainer a 30/30, a 26/30, a 24/30, a 23/30, and a 21/30, and then someone from Team Magma scores a 19/30 and a person from Phoenix Battalion scores 18/30, the top three places would go to the 30/30, the 19/30, and the 18/30 since only one person from Trainer can claim one of the top three spots, if that makes sense. This way all members of a team can participate and feel like they're contributing, but only one of them is going to be able to get the top three spots in a section. This would obviously be section dependent, so it would work for something like art or writing, but not so much for URPG since the URPG's system is done on the number of wins one receives individually and as a team.

I think Winter's idea with the limited scoring also works because when you look at last year's results in judging (http://www.pokemoncrossroads.com/forum/showthread.php?3971-WAR-Scoreboard-%28FINAL-RESULTS-IN%29), you can see that in some cases like in RP, sprite art, and GCEA, two people from the same team could take one of the top three places. In the current system, if, for example, Phoenix Battalion has 5 people that put in stuff for drawn art and every other team only has one, Phoenix Battalion has 5 chances of getting all three of the top three spaces for that week. Basically, the more people that can enter a given category on a given week from the same team, the odds of that team having more than one member place in the top three increase. Phoenix Battalion gets five chances to place in top three in that example whereas every other team gets only one because Phoenix Battalion had 5 people enter that category and the other teams only had one. If we limit it to where only one person can earn the points for their team, it wouldn't matter if all 21 people from Team Trainer entered drawn art or not because even three of their members placed in the top 3, not all three of those members would earn the points for top three, two others from two different teams would. Hopefully that makes sense, but basically instead of making it a system where the more people you have enter a competition from the same team, the higher the odds of multiple people from the same team placing in the top three, make it a system where the more people you have enter a competition from the same team, the higher the odds of one of them placing into the top three.

In terms of future WAR events, I especially like the pre-team draft selection that Elysia presented and that Harry posted. I think a thought I had earlier was similar to it, but our ideas both stemmed from similar ideas: housing at our schools. Her school does it differently I think, but the way my school does it is you get to pick your top three housing choices and they try to accommodate that as best as they can. The way I was thinking it was different than what Harry said, but team leaders create their teams, and then after a certain date, members sign up to be drafted onto a team based on the top 3 teams they chose when they signed up. This way people are still getting the teams they want, they still get to be with their friends (though not as many as they may have preferred), people get to make new friends, and there's balance in the system in that everyone has an even team. If anyone joined after the initial draft, we could just add them in as we go or figure something out for them.

While I'm for the draft because it still lets people choose while enforcing balance, I think the cap does that too, so long as it's a soft cap. However, with that said, I feel like we may have people who may just wait around for the team they want to join to open up, and then we have unhappy people because if their team doesn't open up, they may feel obligated to join another team and therefore be unhappy about that.

Ultimately, I'm going to be okay with whatever we choose. Whatever creates balance and makes people happy would be the best option in my eyes. I have my preferences on what I'd like to see for that, as stated above, but at the same time, I'm not going to throw a fit if those things aren't chosen. I just don't want to see another incident like this where there's 21 people on one team and then 5 or 6 people on another, and then there's people on those teams of 5 or 6 feeling outclassed and discouraged because they don't feel like they can really do much or have any chance at winning. No one should have to feel bad about joining a certain team, but no one should feel like they stand no chance at winning either. It's not about winning, yes, and we've established that, but at the same time, everyone should be on some sort of equal ground in terms of being able to win the overall event and the individual events because winning does give people a sense of accomplishment (at least most people, maybe not all, I dunno). At the moment, there's not that level ground, but I have faith that we can reach that level ground, if not this year, then next year for sure.

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

Regarding limiting team scoring... what about if only Awesome and Prism enter art? Each team submits 3 fantastic pieces, 30/30. Trainer enters and submits 1 crappy piece (5/30). But that piece is guaranteed at least 3rd because only 3 teams entered... That seems a bit strange and might encourage teams to enter 'spam' entries to pick up the guaranteed points.

I just feel like its a bit artificial. I guess I would prefer to score points because my entry was really good, not just because all the great artists were on the same team and therefore couldn't compete.

It would be nice if there was a solution that fixed everything but I kinda feel maybe it's a bit late for this year, because it needs to be done on a team level like with the predraft or something.

[Elysia]

Sorry, a couple of people were discussing my thing so I figured I should actually pop in here an explain a little. The way I imagined, it wouldn't actually be a draft--a few weeks before WAR actually kicks off, there'd be an open call for anyone to post that they want to participate in WAR. Based off of these numbers, whoever's running WAR determine a set number of teams based on the total number of people who want to play. Then, everyone is randomly rolled onto one of those teams. From there, each team works among themselves to determine a leader, pick a name, establish a theme, and so forth.

This would let people meet new people while still having a pretty fair chance of having a fair amount if their friends on their team. Since it's randomly decided, I imagine people wouldn't be as distressed because it's less of a "team captain X doesn't love me as much as player Y" and more of "the RNG declared it to be so."

...sorry, I'm not entirely familiar with how things operate 'cause I'm a little foreign here. I know that the randomly-sorted system sounds a little strange, but I can say from personal experience that it's actually pretty effective in portraying subsections of a community--this way, each team let's its members interact with sections of the community that they might never meet otherwise. Team-building and friendship and integrating new faces and such. ^^

Idk it sounds really silly typed out but I hope maybe it's worth your consideration?

[bronislav84]

Relying on RNG entirely to pick teams? I'm never lucky, and may end up with people I don't know or don't care for. If we go with any draft, let's have an initial core team draft and then open recruitment as Harry described. I guess it's his idea now.

I'm still vehemently against drafts.

[Elysia]

Relying on RNG entirely to pick teams? I'm never lucky, and may end up with people I don't know or don't care for. If we go with any draft, let's have an initial core team draft and then open recruitment as Harry described. I guess it's his idea now.
I mean, the point of the RNG would be precisely to put you with teammates that you don't know--it would let people step out of their comfort zones a little and get to know some of the other fantastic members on PXR. New members? They're afraid to pick a team full of people they "don't know" as well--coming from experience, there's a list of teams here and I only know a handful of people. As a not-quite-newbie, I know that everyone here loves WAR, but how do I pick a team? If I get lucky, I'll meet new people. Maybe I won't. Suuuuuper scary, actually. I know you have your experience and desire to be with your friends, and so do a lot of people here, but there are a decent amount of people who aren't in the same boat. Also, meeting new friends.

Also, it's not like all of your friends will all be on different teams. There's a fair chance that you'll get a couple of people that you know really well, depending mostly on how many people you know. If you are friends with roughly 20% of the people participating in WAR, for example, then roughly 20% of your team would be your teammates anyway!

Point being, I think WAR is a place of competition as well as a place of friendship. A lot of the issues that are happening now are, I think, in part because some people feel excluded or isolated from other parts of the community (this is not to single anyone out; I think it goes both ways). However, if you only ever stick with the people you know, how can you ever make new friends? It's not like you can never talk to your other friends ever again because you were randomly rolled onto different teams for a summer.

My biggest fear with pick-based drafts is that there will be a ton of drama. As far as I understand (correct me if I'm wrong), the idea here is to have a few team leaders who would then take turns picking different members for their team? People say that this was disastrous when attempted before because lots of people got sad that they were picked late in the game/often friendships still get split onto different teams/seriously who wants to be that last kid picked on the kickball team. Again, not terribly familiar with the exact history here, but it sounded like people really just got sad and there was a lot more drama than necessary? This sounds weird, but removing the option of choice also removes the responsibility/blame that a team leader would otherwise have to carry during drafting--do you really want to have to prioritize (and publicly) which of your friends you would most want to have at your side?

[bronislav84]

And precisely why I wouldn't be for a system like that. I like being with people I know. How about making the RNG for only people who can't decide? Cause seriously though I see any form of draft or randomness as unfun.

[HKim]

I don't know. A random "draft" might be kind of fun and probably very balancing given a large enough participation size. Not only would it spread out the number of members, but more importantly, spread out the number of "active" members. As Kenny mentioned, it's these dedicated individuals who usually earn large numbers of points for their teams.

In fact, any balancing system, if done well, should probably take that into account. A team with 5 members who participate in the War like crazy each year will outperform a team with 10 members who participate only one or two weeks a year. I wonder if there is a good way to measure this "density" for each person.

Elysia's idea essentially says that measuring such "density" doesn't matter because it will be balanced naturally.

[Ash K.]

And precisely why I wouldn't be for a system like that. I like being with people I know. How about making the RNG for only people who can't decide? Cause seriously though I see any form of draft or randomness as unfun.

If you do that, you can still end up with uneven numbers though and arrive at a similar problem. Assume for a minute that the 20 people who joined Trainer all join Trainer still, a couple people join each of the other teams, and then the rest go into the draft pool. It can't fix the problem at hand.

However, I think this could work if we implement a soft cap to prevent that situation. Actually, HKim's post that ninja'd me there gives a good reason against even this unless the soft cap is very tight. Most likely, the two groups (choosing and entering draft) are not equal in terms of average activity during the WAR. I would expect most of the active veterans are in the former group and a lot of the people who are either barely active or may decide not to stick around after trying it for a while would be in the latter group. If a large group of active friends joins one team, it can ruin the natural fixing properties of the original proposal.

Also, if there is an old-school style draft implemented, I think drafting should be done privately and the order should not be announced to save any hurt feelings. That is, only the leaders who are part of the draft get to know when anyone was picked.

[Saraibre Ryu]

With regards to how some points an judging went on last year:

Some teams got all the points in a section because they were the only ones actively participating in a week, no so much that they dominated that particular section. Judges can make a call to withhold points from one week to the next if there is not enough diversity in the teams per challenge, though sometimes this leaves people feeling like their hard work for that week is being ignored. It's a toss up in some cases about what to do. I am not denying the fact that some teams were rather particular to a certain section. I can say that for Team Awesome last year and the ASB, the team didn't realize it until after the fact. None of that was intentional and was purely accidental. As last year's WAR RP judge, I did my best to give points even if people only posted once. It was a quality over quantity kind of scenario for lack of a better term.

[Also we are redoing what we're doing this year in ASB so it's a stupidly even playing field, even regular ASBer's will be on the same level as people who have never touched it.]

While drafting was a very opposed solution to team numbers for various reasons already talked about, I can understand people having the nagging loom of not having enough members to cover everything. Sometimes people win WAR's while only participating in one section, and it was also a joke team. [Octopus Babies anyone?]

I don't like the idea of limiting entrants completely, however I have an idea that may help everyone. Rather than balancing the amounts of entrants with a hard cap I would suggest something I call Difference Balancing.

Basically, if we have one person from each team enter the same weekly challenge, then more people from each team could join, as long as the difference between the highest team entries doesn't exceed a certain number. While I don't think this can work for RP, as RP works a bit differently from everything else, I can see it working for every other section.

So say that Drawn Art has a Difference Balance of 1. The number of entrants looks like this from each team:

1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1

The team that has two members entered in that event can't have any more member entrants until the majority/all of the other teams have two entrants as well. All the other teams can have room for another to enter, because the difference balance is 1, so there can only be a difference of one member in relation to other team entrants.

2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2

So with that, it can move on to this:

2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2

This would keep things remotely balanced without forcing people so much pick and choose. This would also help boost activity by others going "Hey you over in that Team, come play in this section!" After all this WAR is about fun, that was our primary focus. We weren't focusing so much on the competitive portion. Now some teams may not be participating in some sections at all in a week. If that's the case, a team can make it known in a particular section. This would also make team numbers not really matter anymore so much in the 'We're all gonna lose because Sarah laced her banners with addictive properties.' front.

Yes Sarah's substances in her graphics have been confiscated.

So, long story short: Difference Balancing
[In this case, the Difference Balance is 1]

1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 GOOD
2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 AWESOME
2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 GOOD
1 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 NOT GOOD
1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 NOT GOOD

[Elysia]

I don't think that simply drafting the free agents would actually fix the problem expressed--that some teams are much larger than others--simply because there aren't enough free agents. There were only a handful this year (who posted in the thread, at least), and that wouldn't have evened out the teams numerically. I agree that punishing big teams or giving points to small teams are both non-ideal solutions to the number problem, and I think in the future an ideal solution would nip the number issue in the bud by having the teams on equal numerical footing from the start.

In terms of unfun-ness in drafting, I think this is an ideological difference. I'm personally thrilled by the idea of being able to meet new people in this community, although I can definitely see how better-established people wouldn't necessarily feel the same way because they already have tons of great friends. The important question, then, becomes the following: what is WAR really trying to accomplish? Is it to strengthen old friendships? To foster new ones? Something else altogether?

I feel like I've talked too long without widespread input, so I'll advance that question and then fall silent so others can speak. I think, though, that defining our goals for what WAR is as a whole greatly impact our choices in determining how to advance from here



Edit: wow I'm slow and you guys type fast. Reading and responding to the posts that aren't bronislav's

[Ash K.]

Slight problem with difference balancing:

Assume you have two members from Trainer and Phoenix Battalion, and three from Awesome and Prism. What happens when a Yoga Bear wants to enter?

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

That is a cool idea Sabi, but in reality it is probably rare that one event will get an entry from every single team, and even more rare that there will be 2! So I'd say most events would be stuck at 1 entry per team, max 2. It might work if the teams were more balanced in numbers already (so maybe if there is a draft/cap) but right now the larger teams would have most of their members not even being allowed to participate at all for the week and maybe the whole WAR, which isn't very fun for them. Plus again there's an issue of how to choose who gets to participate if more than x number want to. If it was something known from the beginning, it would probably encourage people to make/join small teams, which could be good.

Considering we actually do want as much participation as possible, it seems a bit counteractive to limit participation.

A random draft sounds pretty interesting... Probably not something that I would join in because I only really find fun being with my friends, but I guess it would deal with a lot of issues.

Since Elysia asked, I'd like to mention that the staff's motivation when discussing this WAR was purely to create an event with maximum participation and focus on fun and friends, not winning. We aimed to get new members involved, which is pretty much why Trainer and Prism were created. :) It seems it has turned into a bit more of a competitive thing than the just-for-fun game I hoped it to be, so we will have to take that into account for next year.

[Saraibre Ryu]

Slight problem with difference balancing:

Assume you have two members from Trainer and Phoenix Battalion, and three from Awesome and Prism. What happens when a Yoga Bear wants to enter?

Basically the idea is to get at least one member from each team in a Weekly competition before number piled high. Other team's would not be able to get past 2 unless a team specifically stated that they had no one that wanted to participate in that week. So numbers wise, get at least one member from every team before getting oo many members of the same team in one section. If Awesome and Prism wanted to get past 2, another Team would have someone join in on the fun or they'd let that particular section know. If responses are delayed then the Judge of that section could allow more people to join, as a week may seem like awhile but time can fly super fast. This way people are invited into friendly competition with a 'hey we need more peeps, wanna join us for this week?' rather than being shut out, and it's a way that people can sort of 'manipulate' the cap so to speak. If the person who signs up is unable to do anything for that week for whatever reason, someone from that same team can take their spot if it ends up being 1 member from each team across the board for a particular section. The number doesn't have to be 1, it could be another number entirely.

As I said before, I don't think this would work great for the RP section, because that's run differently than other sections and is a bit weird. This is a rather beta suggestion that works with multiple ideas people had that can hopefully make everyone happy. I know ratios were a big concern. Keeping it friendly between teams is super important too!

[HKim]

Maybe we could create two team designations.

Competitive teams would be required to have the same number of members as each other. The general idea is that these teams are in it to win it and anyone who wants to be part of a winning team should join one of these teams.

Relaxed teams would be for members who just want to participate here and there and have fun. These teams might win (but probably won't) and won't be capped by member limits. There will be no expectation of performance or victory and, thus, no stress or pressure on the members.

[Neo Emolga]

Honestly, I think we need to focus discussion and possible solutions for this year's WAR rather than next year's WAR, mainly because by the time next year rolls around, we would have forgotten pretty much everything that was said here a year ago. However, in light of this, last year's WAR didn't start until July 7th, so if we really wanted to implement a whole new system and start it at a time that worked for last year, we could totally pull it off given it's still May and pushing the starting date back is actually still a possibility. We'd need to work quickly though. Having all of June to work out a new system is possible.

Frankly, part of me feels like crumpling up everything and trying to go with something totally fresh and new that we haven't tried before.

We've never tried a system where we had both a pre-team draft PLUS a member draft (we've only had it where it was one or the other, so I think that's a big point). The pre-team draft would be a system where anyone who aspires to lead a team could post their profile and credentials in a team leader sign up thread and the team idea they have in mind, which would be the team they would create if they were voted to be a Team Leader and would be the stuff everyone else would be looking at when deciding how to vote. These submissions go on for about a week and then people decide and vote on which six teams they'd like to see become official WAR Teams. This would ensure most people are generally happy with the six teams that are being created, which would be an important precursor to making sure they are happy with the six teams they're being drafted into later. The chances of a person being drafted into a team they don't really like are minimized considering whatever team they're called into was voted for by the people because they liked it (big important detail there, because people being drafted into teams they don't like is the thing we'd like to nip in the bud).

Once those six teams are created, the team leaders then draft members one at a time from a member pool of those that want to participate in the WAR. Latecomers to the WAR can still take part, but they'd need to wait until the end of the week to be drafted in subsequent drafts (draft order of the teams would continue from where it left off).

-----

On a side note, I'm not really a fan of messing around with the scoring system (seems like it would get awfully complicated) or how people can submit (I agree with Sarah, a limited number of submissions forces only the best of the best to participate, which isn't good because we want new people to get in on everything they can as well). It also doesn't work for certain sections like RP and competitive battling areas that have ongoing participation. Plus, I think balancing the teams is the main concern.

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

I like that idea Harry! And I think we kind of already did that without meaning to! But if a relaxed team got 20 members and the competitive teams only had 10, would the competitive teams not like that/think it was unfair?

Or does it depend on the member distribution? Like if most experienced members were on competitive teams, would the competitive teams not mind large relaxed teams full of people just wanting to join in and have fun?

I do really like the idea of having a 'relaxed'/just for fun option if we do go with some of the more competitive ideas for drafts etc. :) Many people find serious competition/drafts/etc. intimidating and not really enjoyable, so it would be nice to be able to serve both groups somehow.

[Caite-chan]

We all need to quit making this seem harder than it needs to be. Forget how big a team is because no matter how many people a team has there will always be that handful of people who just totally forget about the WAR or who just joined for the fun of being on a team. If Team Trainer has 20 people not ALL 20 people are going to participate. It could be more like say 13-15 people. You should worry less about how many people a team has and more about how much fun you will have. You are free to join whatever team you'd like so don't let that stop you. I know I joined Neo's team when it was just posted and it was only the 3rd team to join the WAR. Team Trainer posted a day or so after that if I remember correctly and POOF everyone and their mother was joining Trainer. Team Trainer has been apart of the WAR since it first started. I joined Trainer last year only to mow the lawn and be sent to the hospital and have a pacemaker put in. (I was born with a heart problem. Why do you think I'm so evil.) I know another year I joined Neo's team only to leave for a smaller team and he was totally cool with that. I think I'm one of those people who's never really been on the same team more than once or twice if I remember right.

The point is you should join the team you want and not worry about the numbers. This is our summer fun and that's what it should be about. This is fun competition and nothing more. Because after this is over with we'll just go back to being bored out of our minds with not much to do. xD

[Saraibre Ryu]

As a WAR leader who made a huge effort for the focus to shift from competitive to fun, I'm sad to see that the focus still hasn't shifted much at all. Though since Harry ninja posted an idea I had, I'm going to just post the idea here regardless.

We can have Teams stay rather the same but instead have Casual and Competitive areas for members in that team. Team members would state if they are joining a team for Casual or Competitive play, but could remain on the same team and still work together regardless of who is playing for what area. You would just need to keep track of who's doing what. This would require sections to have twice as many ideas for challenges per week, and two RP's going on at the same time.

Anyway as Caite said, the focus is for fun. All the numbers talk and focus on being fair to win makes it all about the competition, which can suck the fun out for everyone else. Not everyone on a team may participate, especially on big ones where I've seen that the bigger the team is, the more relaxed people are and some may have just joined for the fancy perks.

[Felly]

Regarding limiting team scoring... what about if only Awesome and Prism enter art? Each team submits 3 fantastic pieces, 30/30. Trainer enters and submits 1 crappy piece (5/30). But that piece is guaranteed at least 3rd because only 3 teams entered... That seems a bit strange and might encourage teams to enter 'spam' entries to pick up the guaranteed points.

I just feel like its a bit artificial. I guess I would prefer to score points because my entry was really good, not just because all the great artists were on the same team and therefore couldn't compete.

I see where your concern is there with the huge gap between 30/30 and 5/30. I think if there's a reasonable standard for deciding it, it'd be okay. I'll post an example below.

Say we have 5 people from Trainer, 3 from Magma, and 2 from JMC and Yoga Bears in a drawn art competition. We get to the judging, and we see the following scores:

Trainer #1 - 30/30
Trainer #2 - 28/30
Trainer #3 - 13/30
Trainer #4 - 5/30
Trainer #5 - 15/30
Magma #1 - 28/30
Magma #2 - 12/30
Magma #3 - 6/30
JMC #1 - 24/30
JMC #2 - 15/30
Yoga Bears #1 - 20/30
Yoga Bears #2 - 19/30

In the above example, the top scores are 30/30 from Trainer #1, 28/30 from both Trainer #2 and Magma #1, and 24/30 from JMC #1. Trainer #1 would get first place since they got the highest score. For second place, that would normally be split between Trainer #2 and Magma #1 due to a tie, however, under this proposed rule, there would be no split in points and all of them would go to Magma #1. Third would go to JMC #1. This would be okay since all of the numbers are close together; there's a two point difference between first and second, and a 5 point difference between 2nd and 3rd.

I'll post another example of what I personally wouldn't consider okay.

Trainer #1 - 30/30
Trainer #2 - 28/30
JMC #1 - 13/30
Magma #1 - 6/30

Say we see these results on a drawn art competition. You have two from Trainer and one each from JMC and Magma. Under the proposed rule, points would go to Trainer, JMC, and Magma. However, I, and possibly others as well, feel that a jump from 30 to 13 is a lot, a 17 point difference between first and second, and there's a 7 point difference between second and third. In a case like this, it would be appropriate to award the two Trainer members first and second and give JMC third. If there's a 6+ difference in points, then this example would apply, but if there's 1-5 difference in points, then the first example would apply.

In both scenarios, it's still better to have as many from your team to submit stuff if they can because you boost your odds of getting one of the top three spots, but at the same time, we're also not excluding smaller teams by doing this. Hopefully this all makes sense. :3

Might be back to reply to more things later after I sleep. xD

[SassySnivy]

You could always make it so that if multiple people from one team place in a place in which they can obtain points, only the member from that team that scored the most points will be added to the point total. Then whoever was scored in fourth place can be bumped up to third and etc.

So like. Say that someone from Team Trainer scored a 29/30. Another person from Trainer scored 28/30. Someone from Magma scores a 26/30, someone from Yoga scored 24/30, and someone from Prism scored 22/30.

Since the two people from Trainer scored the highest number of points, only the one that scored the highest will count toward the team point tally. So that means that the Magma member will get points equal to if they were to have gotten second place, and then third place for the person on Yoga.

[HKim]

So anyway, to expand on my Two-Category Team System.

Essentially, teams would apply to be Competitive or Casual (Felly suggested it as a better name than relaxed).


Competitive Teams would be restricted to a certain team size. This may be a soft cap or hard cap. I do not know which would be better.

Casual Teams could have any number of members.


Generally, people who join Competitive Teams understand that there is a certain expectation for the team to try and win. That's the main "goal".

For members of Casual Teams, the goal is to participate, relax, and have fun. Winning isn't that important.


Competitive Teams will be given a bonus of five points at the end of each War week. This is due to their Competitive status. This helps ensure that Competitive Teams are really competing against each other while Casual Teams are just in it for the adventure.

[Suicune's Fire]

Why can't we all just get along? ;~;


The only one I can agree with is the cap, so that more people are distributed evenly. But even then it seems like we're forcing it. Like people have said, I think last year's war was a testament to how the largest team won't always be the winning team.

I think a casual team/competitive team thing doesn't make sense. Why else apply for the war if you're not gonna try your hardest for your team (with fun involved, of course)?

[HKim]

I think a casual team/competitive team thing doesn't make sense. Why else apply for the war if you're not gonna try your hardest for your team (with fun involved, of course)?


Because some people just want to create large teams with a bunch of random people with only the idea of participating and having fun regardless if they win any points or not.

And some people really, really want to win.

[Suicune's Fire]

Because some people just want to create large teams with a bunch of random people with only the idea of participating and having fun regardless if they win any points or not.

And some people really, really want to win.

Okay, I'm just not convinced that many teams would be like that. xD

Well now it seems like there's only two ends of the spectrum! I'd rather be in the middle. If you win, you win, and if you don't, you don't. Still try hard and try to win, but don't bust your nut or chuck a hissy fit if you lose. XD


Did any drama like this happen in PE2K's wars?

[HKim]

Did any drama like this happen in PE2K's wars?


Yes. One time I merged Team Trainer with Team Tri-Blade to win the War over Team Nox. It really pissed Neo off.

To be fair, he was probably right.

[Ace Trainer Liam]

I like the idea of a randomizer choosing people, but what if we mixed that idea with another one some people had: picking a few teams from the beginning and being chosen onto one. People pick a few teams they'd want to be on, then the randomizer puts those people randomly on those teams with an even distribution.

I also like the idea of soft caps that can be tightened to an extent; if you truly wanted to participate in WAR then there's probably a couple teams you wouldn't mind joining, if someone turns away from WAR simply because they didn't get on a team they really wanted to, would they have participated at all? I don't know, maybe, maybe not. But then again my idea of a soft cap was more of saying "around this number" (say 15) with -2/+1 wiggle room, but then when added another cap add to the original 15?

I also like the idea of split teams, having some for competitive and others for fun.

[Lord Celebi]

I like the idea of a randomizer choosing people, but what if we mixed that idea with another one some people had: picking a few teams from the beginning and being chosen onto one. People pick a few teams they'd want to be on, then the randomizer puts those people randomly on those teams with an even distribution.
We've done this before and they have been some decidedly low energy WARs (WAR VI comes to mind). I recall a lot people being very unhappy with drafting decisions and basically all-but-quitting if they didn't get onto the team they wanted.


I also like the idea of soft caps that can be tightened to an extent; if you truly wanted to participate in WAR then there's probably a couple teams you wouldn't mind joining, if someone turns away from WAR simply because they didn't get on a team they really wanted to, would they have participated at all? I don't know, maybe, maybe not. But then again my idea of a soft cap was more of saying "around this number" (say 15) with -2/+1 wiggle room, but then when added another cap add to the original 15?
This is definitely the most workable of the solutions. However, my concern with this is two-fold: 1) If a team is temporarily "full," people will just wait for the cap to be raised. 2) The raising of the cap would rely on other teams being popular enough to get members. "Joke" teams wouldn't work in this environment. We would either have to ban joke teams or we'd have to wait for them to fill up.

[Neo Emolga]

Yes. One time I merged Team Trainer with Team Tri-Blade to win the War over Team Nox. It really pissed Neo off.

To be fair, he was probably right.

I think that happened during Season 2, and I was only a newbie back then who didn't know his foot from his face when it came to WAR stuff. But yeah, it brought up a lot of controversy with some other people.

But that's all past tense. I don't keep grudges and it's really just a game. Definitely need to let bygones be bygones.

[Homura]

Did any drama like this happen in PE2K's wars?

"Every year" is your answer.

In any case, empirically speaking ceiling has had been the most successful of the methods to deal with the issue of "large teams". If a person wants to wait for a team to open up, then they can wait. If they want to join in on the war and their preferred team isn't open, they can join a different team. What you have to understand is that there will never be a system to which everybody will be happy, so just stick this utilization method here and be done with it.

[purple umbreon]

Honestly, I think we need to focus discussion and possible solutions for this year's WAR rather than next year's WAR, mainly because by the time next year rolls around, we would have forgotten pretty much everything that was said here a year ago. However, in light of this, last year's WAR didn't start until July 7th, so if we really wanted to implement a whole new system and start it at a time that worked for last year, we could totally pull it off given it's still May and pushing the starting date back is actually still a possibility. We'd need to work quickly though. Having all of June to work out a new system is possible.
Eh...? I actually thought it was strange things were going to start in June. I mean, a lot of students have exams then, don't they? I know I do. I always thought June was bad to start this thing but I didn't say it because I can find time to participate, even during my exams.

But to the topic, from all those things that are discussed I think soft cap or only giving the points to one member of each team will work out the best. Of course it has to be within reason and I think for soft caps you don't have to wait until each team has reached the soft cap but more to the difference between the team with the most members and the team with the least members. I feel it would be a bit more flexible that way. Of course that would be more difficult to implement and control.
I really don't like the idea of giving the teams with the least members extra points. It could happen that there are more of them joining a section then those of another team.

[bronislav84]

One member winning points per category per team sounds reasonable to me, though it could lead to teams entering something crappy just to get the third place points if nobody else enters. This is a possible abuse of the system and need to be not indulged. If an entry is particularly bad and there's only three entries, the judge should be allowed to not give out all the points and reserve them for actual good entries.

Ken and Harry remember the old days to too.

Draft and voting Wars "worked" in the sense that people didn't object too much, but they were very definitely low energy Wars and there just wasn't a lot of activity. People were not compelled to compete for a team that they just ended up on without familiarity even with preferences and a certain number of refusals, or a team they didn't vote for. The voting season was actually more active than the draft season IIRC, but it was still very much a popularity contest. The teams that were trending were IIRC run by high profile members where it became entirely a contest of Team Leaders instead of actual good team ideas. I merged my votes with Tamer and we were going to run a team together, but he disappeared around that time. These systems overall didn't work. If they worked, we would still be using them right?

Team ceilings AKA soft caps were the only method people didn't hate back when they were tried. A capping ensures balance, but making it soft and raising it when all teams are at the cap is what worked. A War like this definitely needs to exclude joke teams, teams who only care about one or two sections that give bonuses for War competition (Pure battling teams for example), or teams formed from the get go as not in it to reasonably try at a win. These teams would suck up members due to the soft cap rule just to fill up their ranks, but not be fun to be on for the vast majority who can't get on the more defined and refined teams. This was the downfall of the soft cap system and that's why it was only used a couple of times. If restriction on what kind of teams are created is put in place, soft caps could work very well and become a staple.

This brings me to my last point. I'm not convinced on having teams labeled as non competitive teams. The War event is by definition a competitive event meant to spur forum activity. I'm not saying it's wrong to join a team then not compete, but everyone who joins the War commits to at least as much participation as they can reasonably handle. Forcing people to compete or overextend themselves is wrong, but so is making teams just to get points and not actually have a use for them. The non competitive War sounds like it would make more sense as a Parody War or an entirely separate event. Just running two concurrent War RPs would be a nightmare, even if the backstory was the same. If we do end up doing that, there should be separate judges.

And these are my thoughts.

[Felly]

I've more or less opted out of this thread, but since I saw a post I felt like I should reply to since I pretty much already provided an idea on it that was probably missed/disregarded/whatever the reason is that it wasn't seen, I'm going to go ahead and do that. I'm also just going to go ahead and add this: just because it didn't work in the past doesn't mean it can't work now. That's the main argument I'm seeing against the drafts, so my counter argument is that just because it didn't work once or twice or however many times doesn't mean it can't ever work. An unwillingness to try is an unwillingness to see if it could work now. For all we know, you guys could try the draft in next year's WAR, and a majority of the people would love it. You can't know what the people like unless they speak up or you try it; one person cannot speak for everyone.

Like Homura said, there's not going to be a system that pleases every single person here. If you can please the majority of the people, then it could work. The WAR leaders, the PXR staff, no one here can make a system that pleases everyone here; it's possible, but it would be so complicated and possibly have things that contradict each other that it wouldn't make sense. Please the majority, and things should more or less fall in place. You can't make everyone happy, but if you lose a majority of your people making the minority happy, things are going to fall apart.


One member winning points per category per team sounds reasonable to me, though it could lead to teams entering something crappy just to get the third place points if nobody else enters. This is a possible abuse of the system and need to be not indulged. If an entry is particularly bad and there's only three entries, the judge should be allowed to not give out all the points and reserve them for actual good entries.

In one of my other posts, I suggested that if there's a large gap, say 10 or more, between first and second or second and third, then give the points to whoever normally would have received that position. There's a full example in this post (http://www.pokemoncrossroads.com/forum/showthread.php?6600-Team-System-Discussion-and-Ideas&p=150814&viewfull=1#post150814) that I'm not going to regurgitate. It would basically be judges discretion on the gap itself, but I think that all of our judges can make the appropriate judgment on that. They probably wouldn't have been chosen as judges if they were going to be awfully biased or anything of the sort.

Of course, I also have my opinions on how judging is done, but I feel like this year's issues should be addressed before we get into next year's, and as far as I'm aware, this year's issues haven't really been resolved (even though they possibly could be). That and I can address those after this year's WAR when I feel my comments would be more appropriate since I'll have another year under my belt and will have seen more on the judging anyways.

[bronislav84]

Really? You're going to ask people to try a system previously proven flawed again to see if they feel it's not flawed? If it worked, we would still be using it. *sigh* Okay, good luck with that. I'm gonna say I'm still against drafts from the bad precedent and just leave it at that.

As for that solution to the issue if crap entries, yea sorry I missed that. It sounds pretty reasonable.

Carry on people. I trust the Leaders, or whoever will be Leaders next year.

[Ace Trainer Liam]

I think having two separate WARs and systems would be a bad idea just to separate the competitive teams and the "joke" teams. To be honest, I don't really like the term "joke" team anyway; what if a "joke" team had the most active people on it and won WAR, or got second? Are they still a joke? They probably would've had the most fun out of any other team, which, iirc, was the main point of this years WAR: to have fun. Albeit yea, this is a competition, but there seems to be a blend of "joke" teams and competitive teams imo; some teams seem to focus more on competition than others, some more about fun, and others that are in between.

Also just because a team focuses more on fun doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to compete (and vice versa: competitive teams should be having fun). More likely less people would join those teams, which leads us in a nice segue to team system issues.

There seems to be a more consensus from experienced people about the draft not working well, or giving results that work, but aren't as fun. Also, people seem more inclined to a soft cap, or a variation of a soft cap. That still presents an issue where Lord Celebi pointed out that people would then wait until the team they want opened up. I think we should discuss more about how to solve that issue, and maybe, not solve it.

I would think if people were interested in doing WAR by themselves, they would be willing to join a variety of teams and if a team they wanted was full, they could wait, but eventually would have to choose one. Recruiting people to teams that are harder to get people into would help this issue, or maybe blending teams together that are too, or very small. (I know blending teams in the past has been an issue, but those teams would have to come to realization that if they want to be on the competing platform they would need to blend or accept that they may not be as big a force as they may have wanted).

Any system we eventually agree upon (or at least majority agrees upon) will not be perfect and some people will be upset about it; however, I also think any of the ideas that have been presented so far would help the system we have and that's better than nothing.

EDIT: also I agree with Felly that if something didn't work out before, maybe we can tweak it and try again.

[bronislav84]

Octopus Babies was a joke team that partook purely in the competitive battling sections and won a War. Kind of recent, actually. That's considered a fiasco.

A joke team is considered a team that has zero substance or is just a War-related thread that is completely random. There was a team about animated gifs in the same War. Also a joke team. It's about as bad as titling your thread [WAR] My Team and for the opening post saying this is a War team, join please. I'd be like, why? Your team is about nothing. A joke team is pretty much defined as a team that has no semblance of what it's about and equates to this is a team, join.

[Ace Trainer Liam]

Octopus Babies was a joke team that partook purely in the competitive battling sections and won a War. Kind of recent, actually. That's considered a fiasco.

A joke team is considered a team that has zero substance or is just a War-related thread that is completely random. There was a team about animated gifs in the same War. Also a joke team. It's about as bad as titling your thread [WAR] My Team and for the opening post saying this is a War team, join please. I'd be like, why? Your team is about nothing. A joke team is pretty much defined as a team that has no semblance of what it's about and equates to this is a team, join.

Oh well that makes sense. To my knowledge, at least what I've seen so far, there haven't been any joke teams yet.

I'm still a fan on soft caps and what Homura said last page.

[VeloJello]

Personally, if we're going to alter the system (which I don't believe should happen, I believe we should just let people pick whatever team they want and let things go how they go) I think that allowing each team to only place once in any given category is the best system. Having caps would just pressure people to get things done nownownow without waiting to see if any good new teams emerge, and a draft sucks the fun out of things because it doesn't allow people to pick what team they want to be on. just my two cents bye

[bronislav84]

Oh well that makes sense. To my knowledge, at least what I've seen so far, there haven't been any joke teams yet.

I'm still a fan on soft caps and what Homura said last page.Yoga is as close as we're getting to a joke team this year, but at least they're dedicated. Just look up Octopus Babies thread.

[Saraibre Ryu]

Yoga is as close as we're getting to a joke team this year, but at least they're dedicated. Just look up Octopus Babies thread.

You might not be able to find it as last I checked, PE2K is the dead. If anyone does, let me know.

[Elysia]

Yoga is as close as we're getting to a joke team this year, but at least they're dedicated. Just look up Octopus Babies thread.

Yoooooo, we just need a good graphic designer for the awesome banners and the four five seven of us are gonna rock your world with our killer yoga moves.
...yeah, no, we're definitely a joke team, but we're trying really hard not to be, honest!


You might not be able to find it as last I checked, PE2K is the dead. If anyone does, let me know.

I know we used to be able to find it with the Wayback Machine (https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://pokemonelite2000.com/), but 1) I don't know if it saved individual threads such as WAR team chats, and 2) for some reason, clicking on that tries to take me to Twitter now.

I'm kinda against the limiting of submissions/only letting one team place per category for the following reasons:
=Even with a point gap limiter like Felly suggested (ie, if there's a 10-point gap between first/second place and a potential third place submission from a different team, if I understand correctly), this seems horribly arbitrary: it'd be really easy for judges to create a 10-point gap in their scoring anyway. Heck, if I were a judge and I thought that two submissions from the same team deserved second place, this would be my first instinct in order to let the most deserving submissions get the most points for their teams this is also why I'm not a judge probably
=There's a fine line between making WAR more competitively viable (ie levelling the playing field for big and small teams, like we're trying to do here), and completely nuking the competitive aspect. I think that by preventing teams from scoring multiple places, even if they *do* present work that merits 1st/2nd place, starts to fall in the latter. We're trying to balance the competition, not nip it in the bud.
=If anything, I think it might discourage members from large teams from placing because they might get absolutely no points for their work. If I'm on a team with someone who's really good at category [X] and I figure that they're gonna place higher than I will, then there's basically no point for me to enter my own work, because I won't get any points anyway. This is sad. :(

That being said, I'm going to throw my hat in with the soft cap crowd because no one wants random drafts I promise they're great guys, really ;-;. There's some general fear about people just waiting until the teams they want to open up, but doesn't this solve both the problem of people not getting on the teams they want as well as large/small teams in one shot? Also, I'm asking this not as a rhetorical question but as a legitimate query: is there anyone who would choose not to compete in WAR at all simply because their first-choice team is full? That seems to be another major concern here, but I'm not sure if I'm understanding it correctly.

Also also, could we maybe set up a poll (perhaps after the dust has settled more on each individual system) with all of the potential options suggested (perhaps including a "keep things the way they are; I see no problem at all" option, because that's still surprisingly popular) and ask people to mark all of the theoretical systems that they would be okay with participating under should they be implemented in WAR? Ie a lot of people are saying in this thread that "system [X] is going to be super unpopular and no one is going to like it," so it'd be great to weed those out early on.

[bronislav84]

https://web.archive.org/web/20140903065508/http://pokemonelite2000.com/forum/showthread.php?t=113763 This be the thread. I found it. It's a team about nothing, and look at the random stuff they post in the thread. Even Yoga has more substance than this and as Elysia said, is trying not to be a joke team.

Letting you know Saraibre Ryu :)

[Neo Emolga]

I thought of an idea with the whole competitive teams versus casual teams. It's extremely simple.

Competitive teams will have a member cap.

Casual teams have no member cap and could have a million members if they want, but they do not play for points.

And bingo, I couldn't help thinking of how easy this would be to implement. People on casual teams can take part in any section and their submissions and performance would be judged totally as normal, but when it comes to scoring, they're simply passed over. This allows newbies to get a feel for the WAR without pressure, and if a team would rather just take it casually and not care about winning or losing, the option's there.

[brandon_g]

Sounds like a great idea Neo, does anyone else agree?

[SassySnivy]

I actually am in favor of this idea, too. Now to just see how many people oppose of it...which may go to show how casual some "casual" players really are.

One thing that's bugged me about this recent debate is that a quite a few people don't like the fact that others are focusing more on the competitive aspect than the fun aspect, suggesting changes to WAR based on this need to compete.

We had a split between two parties: casual players and competitive players. I think that if we ever focus on making changes, we need to find a way to cater to both parties in some way. This suggestion of Neo's may need a little polishing, but it definitely fits the needs of both types of players.

Thing is, without competition, there's really no motivation. It's possible to BOTH have fun AND be competitive.

Another thing that's kinda bugged me is how someone will make a good suggestion--and if you work with it some, it could change into something better--but a lot of ideas tended to be dismissed if there were really any problems with them whatsoever. Which isn't good; ANY method you try is going to have problems that you just CAN'T work around. You have to make sacrifices.

But yeah, I know that everything has been settled for the most part, but those are just some...grievances of mine.

[brandon_g]

Glad you agree. Yeah sometimes people need to be able to make a comprise. Cant please everyone, but you can please most of what the majority of the people want :).

[Caite-chan]

I dono why people have to complicate things especially after we've done this for so many years and never really had any problems...that I know of.

[Felly]

This is just a personal opinion, but I've thought about it a bit and I don't think a casual/competitive split would really work.

There are players who may be really casual and be okay with being on a fully casual team, and that's fine. There's also the players that get really competitive and be okay with being on a fully competitive team. Again, that's fine. Nothing wrong with being super casual or super competitive.

I'll use myself as an example since I don't really know who else to use. I'm a pretty casual person when it comes to competitions, contrary to what it may have seemed throughout these discussions. I don't care about winning, I just care about having fun. However, I also have a bit of a competitive streak in me. I like the thrill of competition sometimes, and so I put my best effort in and have at it and hope for the best. I get a little competitive sometimes, despite being casual, but I'm not super competitive. I wouldn't be happy on a casual team because there would be no reward for my efforts other than comments on my work, and I wouldn't be happy on a competitive team because I'm just not that competitive. There might be others like me that wouldn't be happy on just a casual team or just a competitive team, so what do we do with those of us that are like that?

I'm not against the idea as a whole because it sounds like it could work, it's just that there might be others like me who wouldn't be happy on a fully casual team or a fully competitive team, and I feel like I should mention that before I forget/before you guys seriously start planning for next year's WAR.