What about the rest of us? (Why we need low-rank tournys)

[Matrixmage]

TL;DR below for those who just want the gist of what I'm saying.

Let me start this off by saying that I have no clue if this is where this should be, but it's about tournaments, so it makes sense to me.

So this weekend my friends and I participated in the Price of Gap of Rohan tournament. We're all around the same ranking (700-900), so we never really expected to win. But when we played the tournament, we lost every single game we played. A tad disheartening if I don't say so myself. We had practiced all week, every night, to hopefully not lose disastrously. But lose disastrously is exactly what we did.

Some of you may ask why we even joined the tournament. "It's u1400! You can't win against those guys!" Well that is exactly what we thought, but we worked together as a team pretty well and wanted to play something more professionalish and intense than games against randoms. And that is where the tournament came in. Anyone who has played in any sort of organized event for a normally casual game can tell you that, if you want to be there, the experience is often intense and exhilarating. This is exactly why we joined, we wanted to have a new, fun, experience playing the game we love. The problem is that while we will probably try another tournament, if one anywhere near our rank for team games opens up, the vast majority of people will take the experience we had and never want to play like that again. It was literally like being told that all our hard work practicing was for nothing as no matter what we do, we'll lose.

So at this point, you may be thinking "why the hell am I reading someones post complaining about losing in a damn tournament?" Well I hope it's because I make a damn good point and someone who already read this little essay told you to read it. Though it would probably help if I mention my point, huh? So the point of all this is such: With only tournaments for minorities of the community (does anyone actually think that 1000-1600 are "average" joes?), the majority of us are left by the wayside. Though many of us may want to participate in a bigger way, or to even just feel like a part of the community, we can't because there is not a snowballs chance in hell for us to get a single win.

Below I start to go into what I feel is a bit of an elitism issue with the community, so I wanted to make sure everyone understands the connection to the tournaments. The lack of tournaments for the lower ranked players only furthers the possibility to be elitist by some other members of the community. So by having some tournaments for those who are ranked lower, it'll hopefully help bring everyone together.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As I'm not one of those guys who makes a fuss about something but never gives any suggestions about how to make it better, I've thought of a few things that I think will help:

1) A "formal" rename of the bracket currently known as "average joe's" to something which is not a misnomer. I've not thought of any replacements myself, but I don't doubt others can. By calling these players "average" it makes many lower ranked players (the REAL average) feel like they're worse at the game than they are.

2) Have more tournament opportunities for those in the low 1000's / high 100's bracket AT LEAST. Preferably some for the mid 100's as well. As I previously mentioned, I'm not one to make a big stink and not be prepared to help. So I'd be perfectly willing to run these tournaments myself, honestly I think being a tournament director would be kinda fun. Though to be honest I've held off from applying to be a TD because I'm worried they'll take one look at my rank and laugh me out of there. And this is in a lot of ways exactly what I'm trying to get at with some of these points. The community is, intentionally or not, remarkably elitist.

3) Seeing as I just ended up going there, An attempt at removing some of the elitism that seems to be in the background of much of this community. Though I should clarify, I'm not saying that a lot of people are openly elitist, if anything quite the opposite. I've personally only seen a handful of people who were actively behaving this way. The problem is that it's there in the shadows, and always has been as long as I've been around. Take a look at #aeolus any night and you'll find people cracking jokes about "seton's being the only way to play", complaining about low rank players, etc. Now to be absolutely clear, I don't think this has anything to do with these people actually trying to be elistist, more so that everyone else is, so they just go along with it, as is human nature.

Now I'm not delusional, I don't think anyone can change my third point overnight, or even over a couple of months. I just really hope that this is something that the people trying to steer FAF in the right direction are aware of.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So as this is a pretty damn large wall of text, I'm going to try and summarize it into a tidy little TL;DR:

1) There needs to be more tournaments for those under 1000, the REAL "average joes".

2) Terms such as "average joes" referring to people who are far better than the average player really negatively impact the FAF community.

3) The higher level members of the community (who are also the vocal minority) tend to be somewhat unconsciously elitist, something that only splits the community more.

[Mephi]

There were quite some tourneys for low rated players:

u1200 ladder weekly tourney (20 players or so)
u500 ladder weekly tourney (canceled by lack of players)
newbie/trainer tourney

also the wwpc u1100 has pretty low activity for no reason

The problem is, that as far as my experience goes low rated players are not really interested in tourneys and not as active as better players in this direction. I would appreciate it if this would change, because it gets quite boring in the elitist part of the community. joking

I actually suffer to understand your 3. point ^^

Edit: After the reactions in aelus it was quite clear

[Kalvirox]

There were quite some tourneys for low rated players:

u1200 ladder weekly tourney (20 players or so)
u500 ladder weekly tourney (canceled by lack of players)
newbie/trainer tourney

also the wwpc u1100 has pretty low activity for no reason

Maybe we should have more group game tournaments... These are all 1v1 tournaments...
Maybe that is a thing we should do... It might encourage more lower level plays to play in tournaments if they can do them with their friends.

Also, who said average joes was 1k - 1.6k when the modal average of the FAF community is 900 rating. Something is wrong there.. Should be more like 600-1.2k or something.

there was a tread that had a fancy bar chart on it. If you can find the link.

[Blodir]

There isn't really a label for 1.2-1.8k players so people are using "average joes" pretty freely. I am open for extending our FAF vocabulary

I agree with point #3 (especially with certain individuals), though I'm sure someone will tell me that's ironic for whatever reason

[TheKoopa]

It's hard to determine who or what is an "average joe" because of the massive skill gap between 1500 and 1800, while the gap between 1200 and 1500 is much, much smaller.

It seems to me that 1500 is the point where you need to actively train to become better, while it's not really required for 1500 because it's essentially just mastering the basics (eco, land tech times, air, navy, etc etc).

[theeggroll]

Well written points, but the biggest problem I've noticed with tournies that low ranked is lack of knowledge and participation. As it is, a HUGE percentage of the community don't go on the forums, nor do they read the what's new page nor do they read the topic in aeolus. This is especially true for newer members of the community who probably just aren't as involved as the rest of us. So the newbie tournies being U1200 (which is above the "high 100's" division you mentioned) is because that's when you start to get people who are actually involved and pay attention to the "news". For proof, just look at WWPC thread. The U1100 bracket is continually very dead, with only about 2 signs ups each week. The U1500 and U1900 brackets have double to triple that many sign ups each period. And if you want our vocab changed talk to Gyle, its his fault pro is seen at 1500 and joes are seen from anywhere below that up to that.

[codepants]

As it is, a HUGE percentage of the community don't go on the forums, nor do they read the what's new page nor do they read the topic in aeolus. This is especially true for newer members of the community who probably just aren't as involved as the rest of us.

What if we added announcements to the loading screen? Kind of like many games put tips or hints at the bottom, what if we put tourny notices, etc? Everybody sees the loading screen, and for those who don't care, it's fairly non-intrusive.

[Matrixmage]

There were quite some tourneys for low rated players:

u1200 ladder weekly tourney (20 players or so)
u500 ladder weekly tourney (canceled by lack of players)
newbie/trainer tourney

For proof, just look at WWPC thread. The U1100 bracket is continually very dead, with only about 2 signs ups each week. The U1500 and U1900 brackets have double to triple that many sign ups each period.

While it is true that some lower tank tournaments exist, these are all for 1v1's. In my probably anecdotal experience, far more players (especially lower ranked ones) play team games as opposed to 1v1 games.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Maybe we should have more group game tournaments... These are all 1v1 tournaments...
Maybe that is a thing we should do... It might encourage more lower level plays to play in tournaments if they can do them with their friends.

That's spot on. As I mentioned above, team games are the kind of tournaments that are most likely to attract the lower ranked crowd. The ability to play in a tournament with a bunch of your friends, as opposed to alone, is what really makes the experience.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well written points, but the biggest problem I've noticed with tournies that low ranked is lack of knowledge and participation. As it is, a HUGE percentage of the community don't go on the forums, nor do they read the what's new page nor do they read the topic in aeolus. This is especially true for newer members of the community who probably just aren't as involved as the rest of us. So the newbie tournies being U1200 (which is above the "high 100's" division you mentioned) is because that's when you start to get people who are actually involved and pay attention to the "news".

I fee like this is a common misconception in many ways. While I do agree that the lower ranks do have more new players, and those new players probably won't pay attention to community stuff, I routinely see u1000 players with 500+ games. By that point it's kind of impossible to have NOT noticed some of the community stuff, so I'm pretty sure that a higher portion of the player-base would be interested in these sorts of things than people tend to think.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What if we added announcements to the loading screen? Kind of like many games put tips or hints at the bottom, what if we put tourny notices, etc? Everybody sees the loading screen, and for those who don't care, it's fairly non-intrusive.

I think that's a really awesome idea. Non-intrusive but still noticeable notifications about this kind of stuff is what it really needs to get going. I can imagine a world where FAF will tailor the notices you get based on your rank. So if you're 900 and there is a u1000 tourny going on, you'll see it. But then if you're a 1500, you won't get that notification, but you will get one for the u1600 tourny.

[biass]

Had a bunch of ideas for lower rated tourney on different times (GMT +10), hit me up

I think also a proper ladder tab with stats and announcements will help this, i think Downlord has something in his client, or i could try some mockups, dunno

A lot of the lower level players are stuck in a pit of endless gap/thermo and changing this would help change the elitism

[speed2]

You can try to host these tournament, I would recommend to have some nice poster with few words that will need to get posted on what's new page to increase chances of people signing up, since your majority target audiance it the least active when it comes down to tournaments. Catching up Gyle to promote your tourney also not bad.

To the point where you want to call newbies average joes I have to disagree. Yes if you look into statistics average rating of all players is under 1000 but that doesnt have to do much with this term. Average joes were always players that already learn something more. Stopped doing most of the common mistakes and were better at reaction to whats going on on the map. So this name was always about how good you perform and not about this statisticial average. Anyway even if you really want to, it would be super hard to do something like this, when everyone is used to that.