Organizing the Nexuiz and OpenArena components of the gamefest

I'll start with an example of what could be done. I think it is reasonable to assume that most popular modes overall are Classic Deathmatch/Free For All, Team Deathmatch and Capture The Flag and that instead of having a separate tournament for each of these modes we want to group them based on whether they are team based or not. We end up with four tournaments:

• Nexuiz team tournament - We pick Team Deathmatch (TDM) and Capture The flag (CTF) as modes we will play, separate the teams into groups of teams to play with each other twice, once TDM and once CTF, come up with a chart and disqualify the weak. Then in the final tournament the qualified teams play double elimination where one game is TD and another CTF for each elimination.
• Nexuiz sole players tournament - We pick Classic Deathmatch (CDM), Last Man Standing (LMS) and Arena for example and in qualifications separate players into groups which are all put through 6 matches; 2 times each mode chosen. We count the frags and set up a chart based on the overall number of frags in all matches. This would work because individual play really comes down to frags above all else.
• OpenArena team tournament - In essence same as Nexuiz teams, so no need to repeat.
• OpenArena sole tournament - Same as Nexuiz sole tourney

If we simply don't have enough players for any of these four components we wont be playing it. We will play those for which we have enough players. So at that point it would be up to everyone who signed up for Nexuiz in this game fest to specify where they want to go and how they want to play.

Your turn.

sounds good. In Nexuiz Solo (and maybe others) we could also have special DM rule sets like Minstagib in some matches.

I actually don't care if it's team-based or solo. I can live with both.
Advantage of playing solo: You can switch to "don't give a shit mode" and just shoot everything that moves.
Disadvantage of playing solo: It can happen that your surround by 10 people pointing heavy weapons at you because you've been stupid enough to run into the middle of a big rocket-fight.

Advantage of playing in teams: You actually can be lucky to have people covering your back and even saving your a..
Disadvantage of playing in teams: If you switch to "don't give a shit mode" you'll probably loose the advantage of people saving your a.. for good.

That was funny.

So it basically comes down to choosing between allowing yourself an occasional "don't give a shit mode" or not.

So, you're in for both team and solo? At the end we'll need to know who's to be counted where, to be able to draw up proper schedules.

Cheers

Yes, I'm in for both. Because sometimes I love just switching off my brain and shoot at everything that moves... Just like in the army...

Minstagib is quite fun and sharpens up the eye (through precision aiming). I agree it would be fun to make some matches be like that, if teams/players being matched agree.

I'm in for both.
Just one question: Is there friendly-fire in the teamplay mods?
Because it's hard to aim correctly with rockets. ^^

I'm in for whatever is opened. Friendly-fire better be disabled though because I tend to shoot without thinking. :/

Due to the existing success of Nexuiz 1v1 ladder rules tournament play, we should have 1v1 play using the ladder rules on the official site. Having at least two tourneys would be ideal. CTF seems like an obvious choice with about 5-8 players per team. Keyhunt, 2v2 and 3v3 ladder rules would be fun too.

One argument in favor of 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 ladder rules is that the server.cfgs are already posted alongside well-defined rules including map selection all at http://planetnexuiz.com/ladder/?p=Rules . At the very least its a good reference point.

I'd like to offer my assistance in setting up such servers, testing, feedback, etc. Anyone can find me at #libervis@freenode, #clueirc@cluenet, #nexuiz@quakenet.

- edit -
To be clear, I think the best approach is to run a 1v1 bracket *and* a team CTF bracket.

- edit 2 -
How are we going to deal with competition between continents? Ping advantage is huge.

I think teams modes would be great, like team deathmatch, and ctf for openarena

I like it both, TDM CTF or in solo mode, instagib is nice too whatever
where are the teams displayed ? do we have to bring our partners ? at the time i joined this fest i was on a nexuiz clan which dissolved a few weeks ago

Thank you guys for your suggestions. Of course, keep them coming. I know there was a lot more of you in for this.

Here are some quick replies so far:

Sounds reasonable to me. Of course, everyone else can say whether they'd agree with disabling friendly-fire.

That sounds quite good. I'm gonna take a look at it. In the end, it's really players who can decide whether to have something or not, so if 1v1, 2v2 etc options are wished for, we shall have them, and come up with corresponding brackets. Btw, I'd say only 1vs1 can qualify as a sole-based tournament. 2vs2, 3vs3 etc are all essentially teams so they may be separate tournaments, which brings me to a question: will we have enough players to have that many tournaments? Or maybe one player would participate in multiple of them?

That's a tough question cause there aren't really many good options. The current idea is to have a double match if two players have a big ping difference. Once it would be played on a server on which the first player has better ping and second time it would be played on a server where the other player has better ping. Then based on the results we would have a winner of the whole match to which these correspond. If it happens that it turns into a draw (when win can be attributed to ping advantage) we can just repeat the whole thing again until we get a clear win.

Instagib is indeed exciting. We can have some special matches with this mode enabled.

They're not yet listed because we didn't form them yet. We still need to get everyone who signed up to say hello and become active here and then we can count them up into teams as they wish. Also, we'll have another promotional campaign before things are final, when we may join even more players of which teams could be formed.

That said, if you have partners or just friends who would like to play it definitely would be great if you could invite them in. It's not an obligation though.

Maybe we should start a poll on how many players are familiar and good with those gametypes. I assume most people are good at the classics dm, tdm, ctf, but are less knowledgeable of arena, key hunt, etc.

That would be my assumption as well! So here is the poll.

Thanks

I only played nexuiz for the first time last week. Every tournament needs players to serve as bait or target practice, right?

Count me in for all game modes. I'll figure them out eventually, even if during my first set of matches.

[... I may be lying and may actually be a touring pro in disguise. Don't take anything for granted!]

Glad to have you in.

I am about to make a final draft of the guidelines for these tournaments so I'd like to give a summary. So far you've all mostly expressed interest in both team and sole tournaments and no objection to having tournaments based on that classification (tem/sole) rather than specific game-modes.

So the way things stand is this:

We have four tournaments:

• Nexuiz Team: playing TDM and CTF
• OpenArena Team: playing TDM and CTF too
• Nexuiz sole: playing either 1vs1 all the way through both qualifications and final tournament OR a classic deathmatch for both OR a combination of the two? Please confirm your preferences here.
• OpenArena sole: basically same as above.

For the sake of simplicity and considering that nobody really seems to object this, OpenArena and Nexuiz tournaments would be almost the same in structure. The difference, of course, is the game experience itself (some people like OpenArena graphics, weapons, gameplay etc. better than Nexuiz and vice versa, but both are failry popular).

So all we need to be clearer on is what to do with sole tournaments, a strictly 1vs1, strictly Classic Deathmatch and other "all in one" modes or a combination in which we would have both kinds, and count frags in qualifications and have a 1vs1 tournament only.

To be clearer, qualifications stage allows for more flexibility because the only goal of those are to come up with a chart. In games like Nexuiz and OpenArena a simple frag count could be used for that OR a standard points system from here.

Also I will largely refer to some of the general guidelines already developed at Planet Nexuiz Ladder.

Thank you

Btw, I'd just like to note that the more modes we play in one qualifications/tournament set the more matches need to be played. For example if we have CTF and TDM in a team tournament then each team would have to face off in both of these modes. We can count each match as a single normal match and award it with normal points, as everyone would be playing both.

In the final tournament, after the qualifications, however, if it would probably have to be double elimination in which the loser in a match is moved into the "losers bracket" which plays a second mode. So basically the main bracket would play CTF and the second bracket (losers) would play TDM (which is less challenging) upon which we have two winners, one of the winners bracket and another of the losers bracket and they basically face of twice, once in TDM and once in CTF until a clear winner is found. If they end up in a tie with these two last matches, the matches would have to be repeated until one of them wins both.

It's just one way of looking at it. While not necessarily complicating things in qualifications stage, having even only two modes in out tournament makes things a little bit more complex in the tournament stage because not all matches are played in the same mode.

So the simplest thing to do could be either of the following:

If we have team and sole tournaments only, choose only one mode per each. For example CTF for teams and 1vs1 for sole.

OR have out tournament per one mode. So if we want CTF have a whole qualifications/tournament for that. If we want TDM, same thing. And so on for each mode that we want to play.

Draft done: http://www.libervis.com/wiki/index.php?title=Nexuiz/OpenArena_Tournaments

Basically I've decided to provide some concrete facts about this and decided that the Nexuiz and OpenArena team tournament will be CTF while the sole tournament will be 1vs1. Only sufficient amount of strong opposition can change that at this point. I think I've opened enough window of opportunity for people to come in and state their preferences.

The above selection doesn't go against the preferences of those who DID post their opinions (for which I thank you). Now is the time to have something solid to show and attract more players to this.

For all the details on which the specific guideline does not yet exist in the rules draft, feel free to use appropriate Nexuiz ladder rules as a reference point (CTF for teams and 1vs1 for solo). They have been developed by experienced players and already relied upon by previous tournaments so it is therefore safe to assume those rules are a solid base to fall back on for our own tournaments as well.

It's been noted to me that 5 people per team for a CTF match may be a bit too much. Based on that and the fact that standard Nexuiz CTF team tournament involves 3vs3 play (therefore 3-member teams) I'm thinking of changing the "members per team" value in the guidelines from 5 to 3 for both OpenArena and Nexuiz?

What do you think?

In short the benefit would be more teams, more manageable teaming and ability to almost completely rely on present rules and infrastructure of Nexuiz ladders.