Team System Discussion and Ideas

[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 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.