well... you could just say, add janook and name the dg you think he plays exceptionally

also - sorry... being really lazy tonight.  I will update the list tomorrow.

If you guys are going to start playing with the "best players", can people like me join the vent and hopefully get a game going?

I personally don't object.  Or to clarify, you are welcome to join any of my games and play with or against me, mac.  Same with you, Esuzu.  And if you want me to get super specific, I feel like Mac could hang well at a high level of play, but I'm not 100% sure about Esuzu.  Not because I think he's a bad player or anything like that, but because I have only played with or against him 1 time or so. 

iamKira for his awesome UB and his fire TB

Bier_Kanonier for his unbreakable Oak

MyBones92 for his rook and erebus

Mooks67 for his Regulus and erebus

PeterDumpTruck just for his rants, ^^

py4eek for triggering the critical gamestate error

Actually, this can be highly educational for everyone.  I don't know most of the names on the list.  That means there are potentially a lot of new strategies I have not seen.

Get these guys to do a closed tournament, save the replays, publicize it, everyone learns from the experience.  New players and mid-level players can watch and see what was going on.  Maybe even have a commentator to review the replays to give some insight on the strategies deployed.

Then players aspire to do better so they can get in on it, or they learn and play a more solid game.

The high end players get to enjoy a competitive environment, where they might need to improvise to win.  Isn't that what most of these guys want?  Hopefully they will have fun too, and "get their name out there" so to speak.

i just played vs cowbuttzex earlier today and i second his nomination.

Certainly not by me, nor by many other players who gladly play against premade teams as long as teams are reasonably balanced.

The point of this thread and some comments in it stink of elitism, the same kind of close-minded, elitist attitude that's droven some "my-lil-premade-only" players to "non-playing heaven" . Ideas like organizing closed tournaments in a community as Demigod's one make me eyes roll .

But i'll leave the train in this station, i don't wanna help in keeping this thread at the top of the forum. Hey, maybe i'm just flaming away cos i'm in not the list .

The idea of a closed tournament is not to reinforce elitism.  It is to ensure the integrity of a competitive and fair tournament.  Find out where certain players place amongst themselves, in good fun.  Plus, if the replays are publicized, everyone can learn from the incidents as well.  The good players will improve amongst themselves, and we all learn from their performance as well.  It's a huge win/win.

If it ends up being successful, we can have other tournaments too which can invite a larger range of players.  In the end, the key difference is to help control the number of players and number of games played, so statistics FINALLY mean SOMETHING.  I would guess coordinating something like this would not be very easy, so the less players the easier to get it rolling.

When I say closed, I mean people register and cannot join half-way in.  I also mean they play a fixed set of games against each other, just like a sports league.  No more "hey you were noob stomping" or "hey you fixed those matches" kind of crap.  An undefeated team in the tournament filled to the brim with other highly regarded players finally MEANS SOMETHING.

And, if a team gets totally defeated with a non-winning record, you can check their replays to see how close it was.  I wouldn't necessarily expect an easy win against such a team if we can really get some high quality players together.

Then later on, we can have a larger tournament where a lot of registrants join in (anyone can join), they play off in some sort of swiss tournament and the people with the highest records there play in the final brackets.  Again, we need a lot of players willing to play and able to have a 3rd party coordinator to ensure some level of fairness if we want the "anyone can join" tournament.  But again, it would have to be closed in the sense of fixed number of games against a fixed number of opponents.  Imagine how hard that would be to setup especially for a first run?

The biggest problem with tournaments is coordinating with a large number of players and in a fixed time frame.  I would propose a slower time-frame since convincing everyone to play at the same time would be near impossible.  Basically people would play against each other in a fixed list and can play them over the span of a few weeks?  Again, it is far easier to demonstrate a proof of concept with LESS players than it is for more players.  If most of these players have retired already, then our current list might not even be big enough. 

Again, do any of the guys on this list sound remotely interested in this idea?

I personally don't think that we'll be able to get a tourney going at this stage.  But what we could/should do, and what I'm really driving at, is starting to play more together.  You notice some of the responses to this thread?  Me n X person will take on any of you.  Not "I would enjoy playing with any of you."  Or perhaps you see someone's name on the list that you think is so-so.  You don't want to play on their team.   The trick is figuring out how to get enough of us playing together and getting past massive egos, because I'm pretty sure that just about everyone on this list is highly competitive.  And the second we even remotely start talking about well balanced games, that means that around a 50% win rate should be the norm. And those of us with the tendency to be stat whores hate the shite out of that.  It doesn't feel like a win/win.  It feels like they just went from winning almost every game they played and now are getting their butt handed to them for no reason other than not having their regular teammate(s) with them.  And frankly, I'm not sure how to get around that.  Even for me, as lame as it may sound, I COULD handle losing like 3-4 games a night to a good team, but then I'm off to lick my wounds and will play pantheon against most likely weaker opponents to get a win.  I don't see myself as exclusively wanting to always play in Expert v Expert games.  I'm actually fairly certain that many of the people in this list feel the same way.  Losing sucks.

Maybe the best way would be to try to get some games going at a set time or pick a simple naming convention that we'll call these games so its clear when a game is up.  Something like XvX Friends/Experts.

nt

All you need to do is make a generic game name and password everyone here should use.

Keep the name and password in the forum, that will eliminate 99% of the bad players from joining it.

In case of more then 1 game going up at the same time, just increment the name by 1.

If people are going to be stat whores, no problem.  Make tournament exclusive names.    Tourn-Pacov.    Well, when I say tournament, I suppose I really mean closed-ended league.  Sort of like how some college football games count for a "league" and some do not, even though they are overlap in the same season.

So in short, I am proposing arranged games of sorts, but we keep score in a separate area.  If they want to make another name for it, no problem.  I can moderate/verify the names.  If this becomes big enough, no one will care about the in-game stats.  Maybe I can even ask frogboy to support this concept.  <shrugs>  Sounds like with the CLAN API availability next year, a lot of this can be QUITE feasible.

I'm in agreement with your idea, but without coupling it with a separate "league" like ladder, there won't be a sense of achievement.  Just lower win %s but a better game.  My solution should help solve BOTH problems.  Fame, fun, glory, who wouldn't want all of those? 

If people really care that much about winning every game, guess what?  Those people don't want to be in the tournament.  I expect extremely competitive play and as you said and what I've tried to explain in the "players with 80% win rate" thread, you'll see your win rates drop to ~50% IF the other guy is about as good as you are.  Anyone with huge egos should get ready to be upset as they will most likely NOT win the majority of matches.

Of course, I really really believe we will see at least one team dominate the "mini-league" so to speak.  I'm just really curious who. 

I think a lot of people are deathly scared to hear that.  "Gosh, I'm not the best?  You mean I'm only a mere match for [insert guy on list's name]... I'm not BETTER?"  Again, I would hope or expect a lot of the other players here are looking more for the game than the easy win.

If that is really the MAJORITY mindset of the members of that list, that really disappoints me.

list updated

edit - if you see anyone in the list that you know to be inactive, let me know and I'll cross them out.  The hall of fame is great and all, but I'm primarily looking for active players.

Some will simply refuse to play as a result of this. I know at least one guy in my little clan that would hate this.  I know that some of you guys can't relate to this at all, but picture it this way.  If you already have a great team, why would you want to add someone different to the mix?  Why would you want to give up your advantage? What I'm trying to figure out is how to convince others to get over the "you will lose some" factor.  The question is what will make it appealing to everyone.  I already know that if I host and XvX Friends/Experts game that certain people in this list will show up.  But I also know that quite a few in the list wouldn't even consider joining.

Yeah, I think I have played against you once for some months ago when I was still a hatchling. I probably got my ass kicked by you and kalel hehe. According to me I am a bit better now and could probably keep up pretty well against/with most of the people on the list I believe