Tribe-related Talk

[Trajan]

As mentioned earlier, the tribes system as envisioned now would be roughly like this:

1) Manual signup process that must be approved by admin (almost all other tribe/clan-type ladders do this).
2) Tribe admins have sole authority to administer the tribe (add players, drop players, report matches, confirm matches)
3) All Tribe members in the involved tribes may post game comments about a tribe match
4) There will be stringent penalties for inactivity and stalling. What has been suggested is an inactivity penalty as well as an automatic loss penalty for tribes who are unresponsive or otherwise stalling in a tribe match

This is the simple outline of the tribes system. Clean and functional with minimal fluff.

Some issues open for debate include the max number of players allowed in a tribe, scoring/ranking system for tribes, and operational procedures in relation to dispute resolution and arbitration. I am sure there are many other issues that need discussing, please feel free to bring up new avenues of discussion as you see fit.

I encourage those of you interested in a tribes ladder to participate in discussing these issues.

Trajan

 

[bravelaker]

yeah good idea on the stalling 2 tribes should at least be able to play once a week which is a problem i remember from before so how will you know when the 30 day period begins so a team can be penalized if they dont complete the game by then?

 

[Spartan_RawB]

In my opinion, deleting tribes for not finishing a game within 30 days is excessive. But all the other ideas seem okay.

 

[bravelaker]

well that may be true but some of the tribes werent even playing once a week if you cant do that then they could hold up a spot forever which is what some tribes did it was a big problem.

 

[SlowwHand]

Let me put this here, also.

"Admittedly I have no experience or knowledge in setting up a Ladder, and to illustrate my point, let me ask a question about something I never understood.

How is a Ladder for Tribes different than for individuals?
A Tribe is actually a single entity, after all."

 

[Trajan]

Perhaps from a player/user standpoint, a tribe ladder isn't very different from a single player/multiplayer ladder. But from a programmer's standpoint, the difference is there. There is much more to build.

For example, if you want an automated system where you can add or remove players from your tribe, something like this must be built:

1) Allow player to request to join tribe
2) Allow tribe leader to add member

In addition, you have to add a reverse system:

1) Allow tribe leader to request player to join tribe
2) Allow player to approve tribe leader adding him/her to tribe

Another big problem with tribes is, well, everybody loves to create one. When I first made an attempt to create a tribes ladder before, I noticed a ton of tribes with 1 member. Why did this happen? Well, I guess everybody wanted to create a tribe (which is good). But something else also happened. These people eventually, for whatever reason, gave up on building their tribe (which is bad). That left us with tons of 1 player tribes. Now what should I do with these tribes? Let them be? Now you understand why for just about every other clan/tribe ladder system, the signup is manual. From a database administrator's standpoint, the amount of useless information is tremendous.

I don't expect many of you to see or understand these problems since most of you aren't involved in programming or designing databases. But for me to make a robust ladder, these things must all be taken into account.

The main problem before was that there were many features I wanted to build into tribes that just took too much time. This time around, it will be a simpler system. I will make it work and then we can go from there and see if we need anything more.

Trajan

 

[Trajan]

Also, many features that you might consider 'easy' to implement and for which you can see no reason why I have a concern- well, everything requires time to program and test. And as many programmers will tell you, debugging is much more time consuming than the actual programming.

In order to get this out as fast as possible WHILE building enough features for it to be nice to use, I wanted to discuss some of the different things people wanted. This way I can see which areas I can shortcut and which areas where I cannot take shortcuts. My plan was not to release the entire ladder until everything was ready. This method, although it would require even singleplayers to wait, would ensure the ladder worked the best.

Trajan

 

[bravelaker]

Trajan i have a suggestion I think that you should have a tribe monitor so to speak to make sure the games are being played so nobody can lock up the top spots and take forever on a game if im not mistaken there was a game between 2 tribes at the top spot that was taking months and they werent even playing alot from what was understood the game never finished and everyone got tired of it and quit . If you decide to make the ladder make sure some set rules are in place to ensure that this doesnt happen. Im kinda blury on the facts of that game if im incorrect then i apologize but thats how i think it went.

 

[bravelaker]

By the way im talking about the gameleague tribe if you didnt know

 

[General_Maximus]

First point-
To set up a tribe, you have to have the minimum alottment of players(whatever that number will be)beforehand. This can be accomplished by this example

[color=dark-blue]email to Trajan [/color]Hi, I am slowwhand, founder and chief of the Tuatha De Danann Tribe, my members are Slowwhand, Boann, General Maximus and so on..., here are their email addresses to CONFIRM their attachment to my tribe, after confirming their membership via attached email addresses, please register us as Tuatha De Danann Tribe, Leader Slowwhand (Tribe Email Address)

Point One and a Half-
All tribe inquires for a specific tribe, go to the tribe leader, nobody else. Tribe leader is responsible for alerting trajan of start date of a tribe game, and with which tribe. 2 emails, one from one tribe, one from another, starts the 30 day timer from the time and date in those emails..

Second Point-
We are not doubting the complexity of programming, I know it's hard. We are just stating, that it doesn't have to be automated, or fancy. Look at the game we are playing, it is not fancy, it is basic, that's why we like it.

Third point-
You are kewl in my book trajan, take whatever time you need to do this, but don't overwork yourself, we are after all, simple people

 

[General_Maximus]

Originally posted by bravelaker
By the way im talking about the gameleague tribe if you didnt know

i believe that was divine and sombody wasn't it? europa i think...

 

[General_Maximus]

by the way, in case you don't know, i was chuckles39 from sayen, and general maximus of tuatha de danann

 

[SlowwHand]

A Tribe isn't a Tribe until they have the number specified. 5-6, whatever.

 

[SlowwHand]

Oh and sure. Not knocking, just asking. I know not a thing, and you may remember from last time that I made suggestions on things NOT related to programming.
We appreciate you.

 

[Trajan]

Thank you all for the feedback. I will keep the tribes system simple. I was also wondering, did we want to keep the tribes scoring and ranking like what GameLeague did? Or do we want it to be just like single player scoring (points-based)?

So do we want to require a minimum amount of players in a tribe? And for that matter, how about the maximum? Is 6 considered to be a good maximum?

I'm also guessing that it is a given that tribes can only be involved in one tribes game at a time.

As for game reports, I think we might make a policy where the leaders of the two tribes who are playing must email me at the start of game time (I may not be present, but having both tribe leaders email me helps us verify that a match is indeed taking place). I will then update the 'status' of both tribes on the webpage.

When a match is over, both tribe leaders must email me- one to confirm a win and the other to confirm a loss. The game will be recorded in the game log on the tribes site and then tribe members of the tribes involved in the match may post game comments.

Trajan

Trajan

 

[SlowwHand]

I agree with all points of your last post, Trajan.

 

[General_Maximus]

I also agree, you got it man! and I think 4-5 minimum, to 7-8 maximum, that way we can have more tribe available time.

Civ2 is played all over the world, MOST of Tuatha is in GMT-6 and GMT-5, so that would limit our available play times. If we can get 2 players from other time zones(at least 5 hours difference), our available times increase.

More available time, increases the chances of a game actually finishing...or at least playing for 4 sessions

 

[kolumbusus]

Oops, sorry for my mistakebale posting in the other thread, well heres what i have to say to the debate:
I hear so much about having an arbiter or moderator to tell whats right and whats wrong, to prevent the quarell that is going to emerge sonner or later on a large scale resulting in agrudge and displeasure i suggest theres also a "book of rules" or sth like that with as many as possible rules posted whats allowed and whats not. Having an arbiter is always arguable, who can tell that arbiter is not in favour of the one tribe, or worse, what if the current arbiter is from a tribe that needs arbiter? I suggest one(or more) permanent arbiters for ladder, one for tribe games and one for cheating themes. Specially this last one should be the most capable of all, cos the worst thing we wish is to accuse someone of cheating by mistake!!!!!
Beside i agree on this posting what are cheats vs bugs that are allowed only whit their description and not how they are done, thats good point, and will prevent cheating to spread in the first time,......
Next thing i d like to discuss it, is the number of tribes that will be playing that tribe ladder. As we regular players know, there are very little players playing this game, more less on scale that would allow tribe playing. the point is, number of people for tribe playing is very limited and if we allowe 10 or 15 people per tribe there will only be 2 maybe 3 tribes with enough players to play game inside time limit (1 month as its said?). With previous experience i can say that will ruin the tribes cos playing same opponent time and again is very very boredome and will mean death to the tribes as happened many times before.... therefore i suggest tribes beeing limited to maybe 4 or as much as 5 players. that will mean some advantages as:
1. more tirbes
2. with less players tribesmen will have to play more offen to keep tribe going
3.more fun with playing different opponents

Well thats about it for now, bye

 

[General_Maximus]

we actually had a great deal of interest from that other civ site(apolyton) in tribes. I still think we should either have 6 maximum players for 3v3 games, and 4 for 2v2 games. There needs to be extra members to be available for a game. Yeah, if the tribe hasn't gotten enough players, you win by default, but is winning the only reason to have a ladder?

NO, in my opinion, playing is the whole point! So if we need to have 6 players per tribe to actually get games going, then so be it. I would rather have 5 tribes, than 10 that can't ever play...

 

[SlowwHand]

Originally posted by kolumbusus
Next thing i d like to discuss it, is the number of tribes that will be playing that tribe ladder. As we regular players know, there are very little players playing this game, more less on scale that would allow tribe playing. the point is, number of people for tribe playing is very limited and if we allowe 10 or 15 people per tribe there will only be 2 maybe 3 tribes with enough players to play game inside time limit (1 month as its said?). With previous experience i can say that will ruin the tribes cos playing same opponent time and again is very very boredome and will mean death to the tribes as happened many times before.... therefore i suggest tribes beeing limited to maybe 4 or as much as 5 players. that will mean some advantages as:
1. more tirbes
2. with less players tribesmen will have to play more offen to keep tribe going
3.more fun with playing different opponents

Well thats about it for now, bye

Tuatha currently has Myself, Boann, General Maximus, Berzerker, War4Ever, and AoA as active members.
Unless they didn't want in, I won't be dropping anyone.
They were in at the beginning of Tribes, there they will remain.