Current State of AWBW (January 8th, 2014)

So.  To clear up a bit of possible confusion right off the bat:

Best Sakuya NA = Mori (Mori2, etc)

I don't use the same handle in all places, which sucks.  Probably should have planned that one out 10 years ago, whoops.  Anyways.  


A lot of people are probably wondering why the forums are down.  Or why the map committee has like 4 active members on a good day.  So here's what I know, from my limited knowledge as head of Map Committee.  

• I can't fix the forums, that's something that is out of my power to mess with, and out of my expertise to know how to fix it even if I did have access.
   
  
• I can't reliably add new members to MC without a bit of coordination and communication from other AWBW users, but that one is doable.  So we got that rolling somewhat if people are interested.  I won't add anyone who isn't willing to dedicate a ton of time to AWBW, and has the knowledge and experience to actually help the MC.  So chances are slim that I will add anyone new, but there is always potential if people show the willingness to work and contribute to the mapping end of AWBW, and also are not jerks.  
  
  
• I can edit the Global League maps, and map categories/rankings in general.  I'll keep updating the rotation based on what I see is popular in games, primarily high level games but rest assured I do actually take the time to look through as many active and finished League games as possible (Sidenote, that's the kind of dedication I would expect if I would add you to MC).  So that is still working just fine.  
  
  
• I can still start public Z Games, or M Games, whatever you would want to call them.  I've just been very busy with life recently.  That's a poor excuse though, so I will try to get them rolling as soon as I can this week and stay on top of starting games and generating them regularly.  If anyone else on the MC wants to help with that, please message me, you all have like 2 or 3 different ways to contact me at least, haha.
  
  
• I can edit anything on this website, for what that is worth.  I am the current admin of this url, so I can ban people, add forums, all that stuff.  Vilearbiter, Pfhantom, and Napoleon can moderate a few things as well.  
  

So dark times for AWBW in general.  But the game still works, and there's still content creators and we still want you guys to be able to go to AWBW and have fun.  That's generally the objective.  If you have any suggestions on what direction I should take in assisting in that, I'll listen to them here.  Otherwise, I'm just going to keep on doing what I've been doing, just like other Map Committee members did before me.  

-Mori 

Thanks for all your efforts, without mapmaking activity AWBW would be that much closer to death by inactivity.
I'll try to help out as well from time to time, either with my crappy maps, or writing a few strategy guides, or something in general that helps things stay active. Right now it's not that bad, actually, but with the Leagues being the only real community event, it could certainly use some livelier action.

My suggestions:
- Tournaments. Not sure if you have the power to do them, but they would be cool to see.
- 3P+ Ranked games? I know this would require finding balanced multiplayer maps, so it's really more of a dream than an actual suggestion lol.
- Advertising these forums around :p

Also I might have derped around pressing buttons and downvoted some random threads by accident lol.

Alright, community events.  I will focus on coming up with ideas for those.  One idea I had was to host public slots, like 4 games for 8 slots total, as an example.  The winners of those games would get passwords to games to continue in the tournament, and I'd keep track of the winners on a forum like this one.  So the initial games are up for grabs by anyone, and they could only enter once, but Round 2 to Finals would be password locked.  

So like, in Waiting Public, you would see 4 games for the January 9th 2014 Tournament, or whatever, on some map like Masked Fury.  4 winners from those games are placed into 2 password protected Semi-final games on All Roads Lead to Sol, and those 2 winners are sent info for 1 final game on Shangri-La.  Each tournament would probably have its own information for maps, as well as the general time in which the initial games will appear, posted in the forums.  The winners would likely be recorded in a similar location. If someone tries to join multiple initial games on the same account, I can always just kick them from my end, since I'd be generating the games.

Thoughts?

Woo, it's a forum!

My primary concern with this tournament concept is that it's pretty much a guarantee that a lot of the initial players would just end up getting booted out of the first games, since they're public and that happens a lot in public games. Other than that it's quite solid.

my maps are worthy of inclusion in a tournament; i hope

Until someone can get a hold of Glenstorm, no one can be added/removed from the Map Committee anyways. I used to have him on MSN, but when it moved to Skype I lost his contact…

Anyways, it's good that the Global League can continue to run. That's one big competition right there, and the most important one to keep updated. With regards to tournaments, I also still have the ability to create tournaments using the "Tournament" function. They are crappy little single elimination tournaments (along the same vein as AWBW Cup used to be), but I could pretty easily run those if there is interest. I would organize it here, probably. But it would be nice in that it auto-creates games and much of it is automated. Maybe I'll play around with it a little bit to see how well it still works.

I wouldn't mind helping out with Map Committee either, but I would have to be re-added and… see above. I also can't guarantee the level of activity needed, but at least I know a bit about what being on MC requires. I'm always available in IRC at least if advice on maps is needed.

All good stuff. I'll see what I can do about grabbing Glen as well.

Perhaps for tourneys a game limit can be imposed? 10 games minimum required to play or something similar, since many (and I mean many) new players join games and never come back to the site at all. Not trying to be elitist, but having some sort of restriction will likely curb that problem.

15 games

I mean the question is, how to impose a minimum game rule? Would I just be kicking people from the game until people with more than X games would fill the two slots for each game, or does someone have a more elegant solution?
  

Couldn't there just be a limit prohibiting members from joining? Or would that be programming stuff on amarriner's side?

I would love some tournaments.

About that 3p+ Idea. I remember we had a team-tournament years ago. Maybe we can come up with something similar? But it will need some sort of improved organisation.

I was shocked when i got the error message on the forums. Maybe you can add a link to this new forum on the mainpage of awbw or somewhere (yourgames, yourturn) so people can find their way here. (I had to pm MorganLeah )

(P.S.: I'm back on awbw. And I have fun playing again, which is nice. So I hope the page stays up. )

Hey look, I actually registered for the forum, which is more than I can say for the original forums.

I just wanted to say that you're definitely doing a great job with all of the things that need done around here and I'm sure I'm not the only one who appreciates it. I think a lot of people take what you do for granted, especially considering you're one of the few people actually managing anything around here (along with the rest of the MC)

Honestly, I'd love to help with guides and stuff but I find myself in the situation where I know enough to tell inexperienced map makers what not to do, but not enough to actually answer/explain everything a good map maker needs to know. Part of it is probably because I'm too lazy to actually go through the thought process and mental simulation and the other part is probably just that I don't get it as well as some of you. I also don't think I can afford the time commitment for the MC even if I were actually qualified to begin with.

Moral of the story here is that I want to be able to help improve the "current state of awbw" somehow, but I don't know how. With the time and (mental) resources I have, I've been trying to point new map makers in the right direction with map comments and my map series on FTA, but if there's anything else you think I could do that I might be overlooking, feel free to let me know and I'll do what I can.

PS: I am *all* for tourneys seeing as I wasn't around back when those actually happened and it always sounded like fun. Hope we can get something set up- though I agree, dealing with new players will be tough. Maybe putting in a buffer of a extra couple rounds to weed them out? As long as we get enough good/active players that is.

Actually that buffer rounds idea just gave me a similar idea that could be good. Before the tournaments you run a series of "qualifier" games. Anyone that successfully completes a qualifier game is in the tournament. You don't have to win the qualifier to be in, you just have to play the game through without getting booted (or resigning super early or other similar technical workarounds). You just keep holding qualifiers until you have the desired number of people for the tournament.

MorganLeah wrote:Actually that buffer rounds idea just gave me a similar idea that could be good. Before the tournaments you run a series of "qualifier" games. Anyone that successfully completes a qualifier game is in the tournament. You don't have to win the qualifier to be in, you just have to play the game through without getting booted (or resigning super early or other similar technical workarounds). You just keep holding qualifiers until you have the desired number of people for the tournament.

We could push that idea further. Maybe it would be nice if the qualifiers (which is a great idea!) grants the winner a better spot in the first round or something? Or the choice to play as first or as second player?

Hey thanks for creating this forum. Always nice to have a little sense of community on these games.


Also like the qualifier idea. Not a big fan of the minimum game requirement since I have a brand new account(but I've played this every once in a while with different accounts throughout the years).

The qualifier thing is super interesting. I'm coming up with a way to implement that as we speak. Thanks so much for that suggestion.

This looks bad. I get alot of errors when i try to reach the page. It loads, but no games are shown.

It seems that i get different error messages with firefox or safari.

No need to fear folk, a me is here

Congratulations, you are apparently new user number 50, at least on the current userlist.



 
       

Also, the AWBW site seems to keep throwing MySQL errors. I thought it was fixed a few hours ago, but it's happening again I guess. So it's the same as the last few posters have already said, as of now.

  

Not sure if it's just me, but I can't seem to even connect to the site now.

nope its everyone. Well me too at least.

Hey all,

My group and I went through quite a bit of effort to contact amarriner to get the site up and running. It should be all fixed up now.

JSR

As of right now at least, it is not.