Better then Leagues...

DeVore

...are ladders.

Spinsol is about to burst forth with a kicking ladder system for the IGN. Multiple games supported, multiple players, logins etc.

Lucutus has been working on it and all will be revealed very very soon. Its rather cool (I had shag all to do with it ).

It will be donated to the IGN and might be hosted on the boards server (or perhaps somewhere else)...

Duel ladders, 2 v 2 and even clan ladders are supported, for FPS, RTS, or just about any other game.
(Amp, GL Minesweeper could be supported!)

They work the usual way of ladders.
You beat a guy above you, you go up some places (I think its half the difference between the two players). Initially there is a big rush to be king of the castle, eventually it settles down to a pecking order.

We'll be instigating some sort of challenge procedure so you can issue public challenges so people can see if the guy on the top is just refusing to play, and not playing at all for a month or more will see you start to slip down the ratings.

You'll be able to see players past form and wins and losses etc.

Any other features people want to see in there? We're putting finishing touches on this now...

Tom.

bubbles

Didn't the IGN try something like that ?

Once tribes is listed !

Slosh

One on one CA ladder ??

H-K

but they always flop.
ppl have to take inituative ie it dont work :P

DeVore

Ah but they will if we offer a small prize every month to the top player.

Perhaps a duel between the top two players (featured on Battlegrounds or elsewhere perhaps?). Nothing worth cheating for but it could be good to be in a big FFA of the top 6-10 players or to be in the top two to compete for a small prize once every couple of months (for SC or that).

We'll keep a hall of fame too to show history of being the top each month.

That should keep the interest going.

Any game can be supported, its just piece of text/image in the database...

Anyone got any idea they want to see included (over time, this goes live soon).

Tom.



[This message has been edited by DeVore (edited 10-03-2000).]

Paladin

o o o o o o o o
CACACACACACACACACACACACACACACACACACACACACA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAASSSSEEEEEE!!!!!!!

Ye know im good 4 at least no.666!!!
If I go below that Ill praccy for weeks to be exactly no.666!

I WANT CA PLEEEEEEASE

NO?
ah well.
twas worth a shot

H-K

yeah the old incentives work well but i found a lot of ppl would quit when they realised getting to the top and beatin koopa isnt easy :P

Stephen

Half-Life: TFC and CS clans bit?

Paladin

Get to the top?
And lose your place as number 666???!??
Why on earth..??

DeVore

I sure will be putting CA 1v1 up there.

I dunno about lpb v hpb. I think we should mix them all up and just note the connection speed beside them or something.

Any other requests?

Currently I'm thinking,
CA 1v1
CA 2v2
Q3 1v1
Q3 Clan War
Starcraft
HalfLife TFC Clan War
UT CTF

Not sure about
Q2 (is it still busy enough?)
QW Clan war
QW 1v1

Anyone got any opinions? Other games you'd like to see supported?

The game needs to be busy enough to keep the ladder interesting, or a game which COULD be busy enough, if people had a reason to play.

DeV.

Dazzer

Dev a HL CS one would be better there is more clans for CS.

Mills

Sounds like a great idea, I'd like to see Q3 1 v 1 and some strategy game, possibly tiberium sun 1v1 or 2v2

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Mills

amp

I will R0><OR 2 da top in GLminesweeper. I will b so high on the ladder I will need O><3g3n!!! ...AND A PARACHUTRE!!!! :EEK

Another great idea lads.

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Lunacy Abounds! Play GLminesweeper!

H-K

qw clan war ? hmmmmmmm
id say habe only one or two so if u do well u get recognition, and say like its not liek the boards where there are 1000 of them and only one used.

DeVore

very true HK, thats why I'll keep them tight I think.

QW Clan War is a sticky one, I dunno if there would be much point but then if you were to do it, you might find clans getting back into it...

Ok, I'll have another think about that one. Anyone got strong views on it they want to share?

Tom.

WhiteWashMan

if you build it...they will come.
personaly they only thing that id be worried about is the updating side of things.
good idea thou

by the way, is there actually apie somewhere that spinsol dont have a finger in?

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Your Dungeon Is On An Incline.
Irate Creatures Cannot Play Marbles.....

Koopa

if there is quakeworld i think you should enforce the use of qizmo, easiest way to start it is to extract qizmo into your quake directory, and use something like:
"c:\quake\qizmo.exe c:\quake\qwcl.exe" to start qwcl, where "c:\quake" is the path to your quake folder.. this way people can use "f_server" to check for bots, f_skins , etc.

Koopa

qizmo is at http://qizmo.sci.fi/
or download from http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~doomgod/qizmo291.zip

Lucutus

The only catch is that I have a little bit of looping code in there that will automatically shoot the string 'Lucutus' or the string 'BiO' to the top of every ladder!

heh heh

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Weekend Motorcycle Madness!!!

[BiO]Lucutus

tHE vAGGABOND

while its a good idea, and to be welcomed, some of the games simply wont have enuf teams/players...

for example who is going to play in the UT CTF one...DZR, KCD....er...mebbe EED (with some anti english hasstle of course ) and who else....

Mebbe something different like a 2 v 2 ctf league, or whatever, sounds like a laugh!

How many half life TFC clans are there over here, out of intrest, as I do not know.

DO ppl still play starcraft, how long did MP's leage last, how many games were played. And sc is dead now, as far as I can see no one really plays any more.

and how many ppl still would play qw, and how many teams would still play qw....

I dont want to be the voice of doom and gloom just asking a few questions is all? Mebbe we have to be creative initially and not ask ppl to feild big teams and stuff..

a lot will depend on the ping the ign servers can sustain to the UK!

[This message has been edited by tHE vAGGABOND (edited 12-03-2000).]

OSiriS

Vagga, we all know that the Irish gaming is dwindling, thats one of the main reasons we need these ladders. People have lost interest because there was nothing to wrk for and they couldnt be bothered trying to organise games themselves. If this ladder idea can be up and running hopefully it will entice ppl back on the net and we may see a resurgance. Fair play to Cloud, DeV, Sloah and the rest for making the effort to try and inject more interest into irish gaming. Wait til this is up and running properly, then we can see what games are and are't being played anymore

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www.csn.ul.ie/~osiris

Koopa

"DO ppl still play starcraft, how long did MP's leage last, how many games were played. And sc is dead now, as far as I can see no one really plays any more.
and how many ppl still would play qw"

yes people still play starcraft, and yes a lot of people would still play quakeworld, me included
id probably have more fun playing quakeworld with 72 fps and a 100 ping than i would playing "halo" or "soldier of fortune" on lan..
ive seen soldier of fortune, and i thought it smelled bad so i didnt play it for long

Paladin

QW is still alive. Everyone (almost) who plays Q3 played QW first and quite a few would enter the ladders I rekon.

Paladin

And minesweep networked? How does that work? Every second turn? Twould be fun I rekon. Wanna game amp? The Very first Ladder challenge!

Ser

who ever has the lowest ping will win, Zzz

with q3 anyway.

idea wont work i think...

gl

DeVore

Not everything is about winning, but I understand ping is going to be an issue.

Q3 is very ping oriented, UT much less so SC not at all.

The problem before with ladders is that they are done half hearted. Updates not in real time, no sense of achievement for doing well, few people will to risk their placement just to play someone worse then them. These are things I am going to address.

I think the best way to do it is to reward activity. If you dont play for more then a month, I think you should start to drop places... that way if you are continuously refusing to play people, you will drop down regardless.

We're going to make a push to get more people playing on the IGN servers with instructions for newbies etc, so we'll get a few new players involved.

Tom.

Shinji

Much as it's cool to see people making a push to organise things here (although it is a shame to see that it's Devore and the Spinsol lads doing the hard work again; seems nobody else is prepared to hold the torch for a bit!?), I am dubious about this. Clan ladders depend on the existence of plenty of clans to keep them going, and that plain isn't found in Ireland in a lot of games. I disagree with Osi's statement that people are all losing interest; people aren't just losing interest in the Irish scene, they're recognising that Irish connects to the UK are now good, and they have a much bigger, more prestigious and more fun clan scene than Ireland could ever hope to have, due to sheer weight of numbers. Between all the Irish UT players that EED, DzR and KCD have, we could almost certainly have an Irish UT league with 6 or 7 small clans in it; or we could do as it is now, and have Irish players and Irish (or semi-Irish) clans doing well for themselves against REAL competition in UK leagues and ladders.

Q2 clans like DzR and HIV and DF used to do this in the UKCCL, and made a good name for themselves there. EM were one of the top Tribes in the UKTL. DzR are undoubtedly one of the best UT clans in the UK, and the EED side which is also a top-notch UT team has 3 Irish members, two of whom are on the first squad. But where are the Irish Q3 squads? Are any of them taking part in UK leagues?

Irish ladders will be a bit of fun. But wouldn't it make more sense to try to make them into UK & Ireland ladders? We're getting internalised and smaller, just as the UK scene is exploding in size. This approach might have been exonerated somewhat when Team.IE went over and won the Nations out of the blue... but anyone expecting to pull another victory like that out of the bag is living in lala-land. And at the end of the day, sorry to all the QW-ers and ex QW-ers, but the ongoing sportsmanship of DzR, HIV, DF and EM in the UK did a million times more for the long-term profile of Irish gaming than Team.IE's one win ever did.

(This turned into a rant longer than I intended, and strayed off the point a bit. I wish the best of luck to the IGN leagues; but I do think that there are a lot of people here who need to look at the bigger picture if they want Irish gaming taken seriously.)

Ja,
Rob

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[EED]Shinji -=*=- shinji@electricdeath.com
Site Editor, http://www.utsystem.co.uk

mewso

Some good ideas and work going on here. I applaud the ladder and hope it is successful but someone hit the nail on the head when they said something about people getting bored being beaten by Koopa. In other words there will always be a small core who rise to the top. Is this good or bad? I don't know but I'm actually favoring the clan ethic for the first time in years and I agree with Shinji in alot of what he's saying. I've been slagging Q3 for a while now but it's only been tongue in cheek. I think we should avoid any discussion on the 'Which game is better?' issue and get playing. A very good point that about the Irish Q3 clans - Why aren't they involved in the UK leagues? They aren't taking away from the Irish scene but adding to it.
On another note why not take the initiative on the International scene and organise International games now. We could initiative a 5 nation compo for both games. Why wait for England to do it? O.k. maybe they have better facilities but hey it's just a thought.

M

TwoShedsJackson

HIV are in a uk q3 league, and so are KCD and DF (I think). And good luck to them cos q3 could suck a golfball through a garden hose, its that bad

As for EM's 'sportsmanship', weren't they like the mosted hated clan in the UK Tribes scene as per yer own admission to me in the pub Shinji? Windups and all are fair enough, but you said yourself they were despised - doesnt sound all that sporting to me :P

Some good points raised there tho - but as for a small core rising to the top, that's bound to happen cos naturally some people are better than others. With a 'lose rating for no games' system, they will have to keep up a high standard to stay there, but I couldnt see Koopa, for example, being very put out at having to play two or three games of QW a month

[This message has been edited by Castor Troy (edited 13-03-2000).]

WhiteWashMan

lol
oh conor, what did they do to you?

Shinji

Yep, a lot of the UK Tribes really detested EM, mainly because they didn't understand the concept of "sarcasm" and "extracting the urine". Tribes was (and still is) a bit like that... Oh, and they didn't like the idea of an Irish Tribe winning the UK Tribes League either!

However, although the UK Tribes had a go at us, the fact is the EM was a very well known team, that ex-EM members still get along very well with other people from the Tribes scene... and that while everyone was throwing flak at us towards the end of the UKTL season 2, half the UK had applied to join us by that stage on the quiet....!

So KCD, DF and HIV are in the UK Q3 leagues... Fair play lads. But doesn't this smack a bit of the ex-Q2 people (yes, I know KCD is about half-and-half or something) taking the initiative to get up and go playing abroad - AGAIN? Where are our celebrated QW clans and players? Are they afraid that if they played in the UK they'd have to face real competition at Q3, rather than running around playing the same half-a$$ed Irish clans every week? (/sh1tstir)

Ja,
Rob

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[EED]Shinji -=*=- shinji@electricdeath.com
Site Editor, http://www.utsystem.co.uk

DeVore

Who said these would be Irish only, I think it would be kewl to have other players and other clans in them too.

Also, one thought I have had is that we should have two ladders for some games.
Perhaps called "Fun" and "Profit".
"Fun" is for messers and people who just want to knock about.
"Profit" would be for those who want to win.
You could enter either or both.

Or else we have a div1/2 or pro/am and promote and demote people? or this might be just too complex...

/me will think about it.

DeV.

Vorosha

These ladder things require beaten-players to register their loss, do they not?

creative

Sounds good Tom

DeVore

There are two other ways, both with their problems:

1. Record scores from certain servers automatically (impractical, unworkable and somewhat undesirable)

2. Have the winners record their victory. You would presume that the winners would be only too happy to record their win, but this could be abused by people recording wins that never happened... That would become obvious to us very quickly (say if the person just boots up to the top of the ladder with 15 consecutive wins against Ser and Koopa) we'll just delete the account, but it hard to control too...

This is something we will have to think about...
Anyone got any strong views on this?

Tom.

El_Presidente

"Where are our celebrated QW clans and players? Are they afraid that if they played in the UK they'd have to face real competition at Q3"


Shinji, PS have beaten both KCD and HIV easily. We arent afraid of the UK in the slightest but nothing is more annoying then being beaten because of ping and despite what anyone says the pings to UK are just not good eneogh to let you play competively (on modem anyway)

I really look forward to the day when PS have 4 lpbs because I reckon we could take most English clans to school. I'm not being big headed its just my opinion.

Jedi

Thats it i'm getting ISDN. I fed up with this ****e ping. Just rang too late to turn back now.

Jedi (hehe)

God please let surf no limits come in quick or else I'll be ****ing broke.

Dr_Teeth

Dev there's no solution right now. However when Orange Smoothie get their ngWorldStats implementation for Q3 done, all will be well.

Currently UT supports this out of the box, it's the best solution to insuring that games that have been registered on the system actually took place as described.

In fact, all the winner/loser would have to do is paste the URL of the ngWorldStats match record into a field in the system, and your code could extract all the necessary data itself (who played, who won, what the score was etc etc).

Teeth.

Chubby

Anyone else interested in an AOE2 ladder? It's better than Starcraft in a lot of ways and more strategy is involved than by just doing a zergling rush to win. Reply back if you are interested and maybe a 1v1 or 2v2 ladder can be started.

Shinji

El_Pres...

Yup, PS have beaten HIV and KCD... Se7en have been kicking other clans over here around the shop as well.. But yet it's HIV and KCD who are playing in UK leagues, and the likes of PS and Se7en seem to be doing nothing but talk up a storm about how they're better than UK sides. There's something wrong with that equation, don't you think?

I see your point about pings, but in all fairness, it doesn't apply half as much now as it used to. Only 5 minutes ago in #quake.ie Butcher mentioned that dialling ocean gets 120-150 pings to UK servers off a Pace 56k... is that really so bad?

Ja,
Rob

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[EED]Shinji -=*=- shinji@electricdeath.com
Site Editor, http://www.utsystem.co.uk

Koopa

shinji in q3 clan wars especially, ping makes a huge difference as machinegun is the most used weapon, which is **** hard to aim on modem

its just like in quakeworld clan wars, modem wars meant nothing because on lan shotgun rushes totally changed tactics.. on modem whatever team got "into position" first had practically won the game, while on lan games could go very differently

most of the q3 players that i know just prefer playing on lan for one day to figure out tactics rather than playing modem with 200 ping for a week.. modem wrecks your tactics for lan, it doesnt matter who your opponent is..

Shinji

... which would be a great argument, Sam, except that I don't see you lot getting your a$$es over to LANs in the UK either.

Oh, and Blokey (who won the CPL qualifier in TPF a few weeks back) is a modem player. Doesn't seem to have wrecked his LAN play.

Ja,
Rob

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[EED]Shinji -=*=- shinji@electricdeath.com
Site Editor, http://www.utsystem.co.uk

[This message has been edited by Shinji (edited 13-03-2000).]

Vorosha

By the way, Tom, I think the ladder is a fantastic idea. I think it'd definately generate alot more enthusiasum etc. Especially if Hecate's info could be implemented. The only worry I'd have would be one I adopted after playing Warcraft2 ladders on me old Mac. 50% of the time you'd play someone who wouldn't register the result. It just ruined the whole thing for everyone. Then again, better off with a ladder than without.

tHE vAGGABOND

are you saying koopa that 3 or 4 hours on a lan is better than 3 hours a night over 5 days...

I have to disagree, tho I freely admit koops you have played more quake than I prolly ever will.

And Blokey from UNR was the best player in q2 in the UK and is the best q3 player in the UK, winning the CPL qualifier easily if the truth be told. And is a modemer who plays with a 150-200 ping every night.

Hardcore modem players need to be that bit more tactically aware, it should not take them ages to ajust to a low ping, that is whey there is normally at least half a day warm up to big tourneys.

While I admit we are all not blokeys, I do feel the modem arguement is blowen out of proportion. It may well have been qw problem, as I did not play qw I dont know, all I know is that its not a massive problem in q3 and ut.

Modems do indeed suck compared to digital connects, no one doubts that, but you can tweak to **** www.lagless.com and try different ISP's.

El_Presidente

Shinji

Your right, I dont think there has been any major anount of Irish players going to a British LAN since Rapture (*snigger*)

But maybe it could work the other way round...

Prehaps some British players would consider coming to one of our LANs?

Maybe even the MIGHTY EED?

They could give us a good wh00ping and shut us up eh?

Koopa

ok ive nothing against blokey, but thats just the cpl qualifiers.. itll be interesting to see how he does against the likes of kane, timber, etc. actually in the cpl..
also, how much lan does blokey play??


vaggabond i didnt mean 3-4 hours, one day of lan would be around 8-10 hours.. id say you'd get better at lan games after playing 8 hours of lan duelling than 4 hours daily on modem

Gerry

I think el pres and shinji should have a duel
in doom2 on the first level. On second thoughts, its probably too much like quake

Canaboid

Yes Chubby, I am.

Vorosha

No Chubby, I'm not.

Shinji

El Pres:

It'll happen, and soon enough. EED have been talking about coming over for a long while (it's just a matter of them getting their a$$es in gear); other clans may well come over as well, if a large and prestigious enough event were organised... and a large and prestigious enough event will be/is being organised...

However, lets face it, the UK clans all coming over here to face the Irish is kinda a case of the Mountain coming to Moses, isn't it? After all, other than Rapture, Ireland has no reputation whatsoever in Quake. You might as well tell the top UK clans to go play in Azerbaijhan because they have some l33t teams, honest...

Until Irish gamers get more seriously involved in UK/Euro Leagues, Ladders and Lans, Irish gaming will not be taken seriously.

Ja,
Rob

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[EED]Shinji -=*=- shinji@electricdeath.com
Site Editor, http://www.utsystem.co.uk

DEATH

Well Mr Koopa I Propose that you the "said" mr "koopa" should retire to your susposed hidden "secret" lair to plot and perhaps even "plan" certain said events to perhaps "construct" a better "said" course of action and perhaps "arguement" but with that said i believe that your "said" points in previous "posts" would perhaps prove to be a better basis for your "said" previous statements.