I apologize if anything like this has been shared before. The idea is similar to what I see happen in other gaming communities, and as seeding/invites etc comes up every tournament time, I'm curious if something similar could work for AOE.
Essentially I feel it would be really cool to have the top rated players participate in a consistent scrim schedule. Anyone can participate as long as they meet some set of criteria, top x% on DE ladder, above x Elo etc. Then every so often people who meet that criteria meet and play, serious games. Obviously the timing could be a point of contention, but I'm sure different times could be set to meet a majority of needs. Games would proceed, say every 45 real life minutes from the start time and each person would be given a random opponent from the pool who checked in. Results are self reported back to a central location for admins to tally, usually a discord channel, and over time once enough of a sample size is generated win/loss % and strength of opponents can be measured and eventually used to help with seeding.
A common complaint I hear about the voobly or DE ladder system is that it is often taken too casually or easily manipulated. This would hopefully resolve that by getting as much of the competitive scene to take things seriously at set periods of time,. Map pools/civs/settings could be controlled by a collective governing set of admins so you would not need to be at the mercy of whatever DE rolls out. Just check in at the allotted time, receive a randomly drawn opponent, and go. This would work for individuals, but also could work for teams. Some scheduled days could be set for 1v1 arabia, others for 2v2 or 3v3, map could change etc.
Personally as a viewer I would love something like this, set times where I know many competitive games would be played, and maybe even get more team games involved. There would be no commitment from the players, if you can show up on Mon and Sat, but not Wed fine. As long as you participate in enough to build a reasonable sample size. Players should enjoy the opportunity to have more control over the settings etc. Casters and viewers should enjoy the schedule and high level play. And eventually, with significant sample size and working out the specifics, possibly the results could be used to have a more fair system for ranking individuals/teams in the competitive scene.
Sorry for the long post, but I really feel for this game to be taken more seriously as a competitive scene this is the type of thing that could help it get there. I'd love any thoughts or constructive criticism on why it would or wouldn't work. Obviously there would be a ton of details to figure out, times, settings, how to ensure the same people don't play over and over again, but I feel that is all workable over time. Thanks for the thoughts.
Essentially I feel it would be really cool to have the top rated players participate in a consistent scrim schedule. Anyone can participate as long as they meet some set of criteria, top x% on DE ladder, above x Elo etc. Then every so often people who meet that criteria meet and play, serious games. Obviously the timing could be a point of contention, but I'm sure different times could be set to meet a majority of needs. Games would proceed, say every 45 real life minutes from the start time and each person would be given a random opponent from the pool who checked in. Results are self reported back to a central location for admins to tally, usually a discord channel, and over time once enough of a sample size is generated win/loss % and strength of opponents can be measured and eventually used to help with seeding.
A common complaint I hear about the voobly or DE ladder system is that it is often taken too casually or easily manipulated. This would hopefully resolve that by getting as much of the competitive scene to take things seriously at set periods of time,. Map pools/civs/settings could be controlled by a collective governing set of admins so you would not need to be at the mercy of whatever DE rolls out. Just check in at the allotted time, receive a randomly drawn opponent, and go. This would work for individuals, but also could work for teams. Some scheduled days could be set for 1v1 arabia, others for 2v2 or 3v3, map could change etc.
Personally as a viewer I would love something like this, set times where I know many competitive games would be played, and maybe even get more team games involved. There would be no commitment from the players, if you can show up on Mon and Sat, but not Wed fine. As long as you participate in enough to build a reasonable sample size. Players should enjoy the opportunity to have more control over the settings etc. Casters and viewers should enjoy the schedule and high level play. And eventually, with significant sample size and working out the specifics, possibly the results could be used to have a more fair system for ranking individuals/teams in the competitive scene.
Sorry for the long post, but I really feel for this game to be taken more seriously as a competitive scene this is the type of thing that could help it get there. I'd love any thoughts or constructive criticism on why it would or wouldn't work. Obviously there would be a ton of details to figure out, times, settings, how to ensure the same people don't play over and over again, but I feel that is all workable over time. Thanks for the thoughts.