twgs.org

Msg.ID: 25850
From: Xide
About: Realistic Options - BG3
At: 2004-06-15 05:40:17

6 categories of (non)participants in BG3:

Don't Care: Those who will play the game with or without Res regardless. Some may have their opinions regarding him (i.e. love or hate), but will play without dispute. I personally believe (without proof) this makes up the majority of 4 categories.

Hate Res: Those that absolutely refuse to play BG3 with Res on their team. I think considering Res's history this is a perfectly understandable decision to make and am prepared to accept (as many of you should be) that you will not be able to change their opinion through abuse or other forms of manipulation.

Love Res: Those that absolutely refuse to play BG3 without Res in game. This can be because they have a personal interest in playing a game with Res, or because they feel they are making a point on Res's behalf if they sit the game out with him. Also an understandable opinion to hold - especially if you are a close friend of his.

Res: Will be Res.

Captains: Have the responsibility of building and maintaining a team of active participants with an absolute minimum of personal conflict in order to make sure as many people as possible enjoy the game.

Left out: Those people who had the intention of playing BG3, but because of technical or relational difficulties were not drafted and understandably want to play.

For consideration:

Time: Under the assumption that the game starts on July 2nd as widely advertised, the captains have just over two weeks to build communication within their teams, build a command structure, write scripts to manage everything, assign roles and positions, strategise, and chase up (and replace) no-show players. For teams of 35 per side this is not a small task.

Communication: Communication is a serious issue because of the number of parties involved. Not all of those participating in BG3 regularly read this forum or are even aware of it. Problems with the web site have prevented the captains from attaining useful information regarding the capabilities and preferences of players on their teams. With so many people playing the game, we have a great deal of inflexibility with change of specifics - such as the game start date, the team lineups, the hosting server, etc. To make an adjustment to any of these is difficult and increases the chance of noshowers.

Technical Details: Largely because of the communication problem, complex solutions to 'the problem' may require development of software/tools to capture statistical information (i.e. a vote on the issue), or extensive reconfiguration of existing tools (i.e. repair and adjustment of website to redraft). Someone has to put the time aside to do this. While TW has no shortage of capable programmers, I believe it would be difficult to do this properly and fast enough to allow the captains time to deploy their teams.

Instability: Completely regardless of current opinion or existing player conflicts, Res has a history of instability in-game, especially around tournaments. Allowing him to play in the game does also run the risk of him destablising the game by creating new conflicts with players on his team or by performing unforseen actions that may jeapardize team strategy. I accept that this is definitely a moot point of the argument and therefore am not going to give it much consideration here.

Strategy and Contact: While as far as I am aware there has been no in-depth strategic discussion, members of both teams have already been preparing for the game and making contact with eachother. So far with the exception of this dispute the members of both teams are not in conflict with eachother. To change the structure of either team would throw this completely out the window.

Options:

Option A: Res remains out of the game and it continues as planned. Players that object to this decision are free to leave the game and will be replaced by those sidelined who are willing to play.

Pros:
* Minimal organisation required - no development needed
* Existing team structure and strategy will be preserved
* Those that favour Res off-game will still play
* Captains can focus their time on organising their existing teams
* An unknown percentage of sidelined players will be given the chance to play
* No need to communicate changes of teams to players

Cons:
* Res doesn't get to play
* Those that favour Res on-game will miss out on the game
* High chance of sidelined players still not getting a chance to join

Option B: Separate both teams and redraft. Fix the website so that players can state their opinions on whom they refuse to corp with.

Pros:
* Everyone gets to play

Cons:
* Everything that has been done (strategy, team structure, drafting, organisation) is undone.
* Additional development necessary (minor)
* Signups will need to be redone, the game date will need to be postponed to accomodate this and therefore it has to be advertised again. Essentially we start from scratch.
* Teams risk being out of balance because of player opinions of Res.

Option C: Create a third team and make Res a static player within the team (perhaps a CEO?). Allow players that favour corping with Res to migrate to this team. Give sidelined players the option of joining any one of the 3 available teams.

Pros:
* Everyone gets to play
* Everyone has some option as to the team they end up on

Cons:
* Teams will be ridiculously out of balance
* Extremely difficult to communicate. Will likely require extensive web development or a very stressed person to coordinate it.
* Game date will be postponed, and all the problems that go with this.
* Will need to deal with those that are unhappy about their draft selection and want to jump from Team X to Team CK (or vice versa) - draft is essentially useless.

Conclusion:

In keeping Res out of the game we save ourselves extensive reorganisation. Please remember that this issue already sits on top of everyone else that needs to be handled by the captains (and SG). For all those trying to be too forceful about their opinions on this, they are only making things more difficult. By abusing myself or CK you run the risk of either of us forgetting the whole idea of captaining a corp (believe me this isn't far away), and then we don't have a game. While it is naturally favourable to run a game that everyone can play, we are at a stage where this will now be complicated to do.

For those who want to bring up the question of why the Res issue wasn't addressed before the draft took place, you may have a valid point but it is a completely useless argument (like trying to blame a corpie for getting you fused).

If anyone has any better options, you are welcome to share them. I will discuss them with CK and SG over the next couple of days and we will draw a conclusion between us. To try and draw a conclusion from this forum would be like trying to run a contest in who could shout the loudest. Personally, I am gunning for Option A, and I suspect both SG and CK will too. I will answer anyone that would like to try and manipulate our decision in advance by encouraging them to re-read our reasons within this message and saving their energy for the game.