backseatdev

BSD 6v6 has died. I pulled the plug myself.

In general, I think the May BSD 6v6 tournament ended up being a failure, but it was not without some good points and learning value.

What happened?

What eventually happened was I simply didn’t want to hand-hold all these teams that seemed so interested in the tournament. I was too dependant on teams showing up that I had no power at all. If a team didn’t show up, I couldn’t just cut them because we needed teams to compete so instead I had to work my ass off finding a time that would work for the team, then making sure the team members knew about matches etc.. it was too tough for the team leads to tell their team. After getting down to a finite number of teams, I set a date a couple days in advance for everyone to show up and play the remaining matches. Every team came up with some excuse the day of the final matches, so I rage ended the tournament. hehe

What did we learn?

-We learned that there is a demand for organized and structured group vs group combat in Warhammer Online within a confined space and set of rules.

-We learned that leaving scheduling in the hands of the teams competing ensures it will never get done or organized.
-
We learned that most people competitive enough to sign up in such a tournament, would rather not show up then risk losing a match. In general, if a team couldn’t field the best 6 people they know about, they would not make it to their scheduled time.

-We learned that a scheduling forum helps, but a team captain excited about 6s is not capable of checking a scheduling forum once every 24 hrs or so.

How I would do it in the future?

-I would start by not putting the focus so much on winning, or being “the best on the server” so it becomes more about playing an enjoying the spirit of competition, then having to win.

-I would probably not do 6s again, I would probably do 3-4 person groups and enforce spares.

-I would probably set a time, maybe Wednesdays at 7pst and have everyone show up at that time weekly, and work on rankings based on the results from teams that show up and complete matches. Teams will know in advance if they can make the time.

-I would continue to use the scheduling forum for events, all team members would have access and teams could alternately schedule matches for whenever if those chose to.

-I would keep the ruleset and location. They did seem to work out well.

-I would hint at a possible BSD 3v3 tournament on my blog by posting a how I would do it in the future section to a post.

Big thanks to those that did come out for 6s and did help out. A lot of you did do good work telling your teams and making matches. Some good matches did occur, and I know the team I was on enjoyed our matches a lot.