Introduction
I have started working on this "CB Ladder Project" for the past 2 months. Initially this project was started by a really oldschool ClanBase Admin called
Dussander, his job was to supervise Unreal Tournament, Guild Wars, AOE3 and apart from that he was a real asset to the Chiefs of Ladders (CoL) of ClanBase. You may ask "why?", apart from his Chief of Ladder work, he also made a huge ladder report of every game and every ladder on ClanBase, he started doing this from February 2007 and retired from the CB Crew in 2008. After he retired, this activity report was no longer continued as it was stated to be "a work for a trained monkey". I have gathered the information from March 2008 till December 2009 for ET only, and it took me around 2 months to gather all the information, as all of this had to be done manually. When i heared about all the outsanding work Dussander had done, I got very interested in continuing this report for our beloved game, Enemy Territory and maybe add another puzzle to 
Wesbo's Column - Why did we stop using the ladders.
Gathering Information
The information was gathered in the following method - ClanBase has a feature for Supervisors, where all type of matches (challenged,accepted,declined,cancelled,result unconfirmed and confirmed results) are listed. So after selecting the information needed, in my case, only the confirmed results are to my interest, i have to select the Ladder ID (lid) and i will get a page of all matches that have been played within "x" ladder, it will only show 30 matches every page, else it would probably kill the site if it displayed 10000+ matches on one single page, meaning i had to browse through every page and check how many matches have been played for every month. (If in a month there were 300 matches, this would mean i needed to go through 10 pages, which contained 30 matches each), now imagine doing it for every single month and all ET Ladders from Feb 07 to Dec 09, really though work!
Ladders
N.B
Conclusion
So, what do we do from here? AsTosspoT stated in his Column - Get up Off of yo' Ass!. I can't force you to play ladder matches, but would it hurt if every clan out there would join & play ladder matches instead of random irc wars which don't really count that much? I need you, Crossfire, to answer these questions. You, the community decides the future of ET!
If you are interested in playing the ladders, here is the list of ladders available: http://clanbase.ggl.com/ladders.php?gid=25
Depending on the feedback i get, I will be making a monthly report and maybe a more in-depth analysis, so don't be shy to suggest & report ideas.
I have started working on this "CB Ladder Project" for the past 2 months. Initially this project was started by a really oldschool ClanBase Admin called
Dussander, his job was to supervise Unreal Tournament, Guild Wars, AOE3 and apart from that he was a real asset to the Chiefs of Ladders (CoL) of ClanBase. You may ask "why?", apart from his Chief of Ladder work, he also made a huge ladder report of every game and every ladder on ClanBase, he started doing this from February 2007 and retired from the CB Crew in 2008. After he retired, this activity report was no longer continued as it was stated to be "a work for a trained monkey". I have gathered the information from March 2008 till December 2009 for ET only, and it took me around 2 months to gather all the information, as all of this had to be done manually. When i heared about all the outsanding work Dussander had done, I got very interested in continuing this report for our beloved game, Enemy Territory and maybe add another puzzle to Wesbo's Column - Why did we stop using the ladders.Gathering Information
The information was gathered in the following method - ClanBase has a feature for Supervisors, where all type of matches (challenged,accepted,declined,cancelled,result unconfirmed and confirmed results) are listed. So after selecting the information needed, in my case, only the confirmed results are to my interest, i have to select the Ladder ID (lid) and i will get a page of all matches that have been played within "x" ladder, it will only show 30 matches every page, else it would probably kill the site if it displayed 10000+ matches on one single page, meaning i had to browse through every page and check how many matches have been played for every month. (If in a month there were 300 matches, this would mean i needed to go through 10 pages, which contained 30 matches each), now imagine doing it for every single month and all ET Ladders from Feb 07 to Dec 09, really though work!
Ladders
- ET Stopwatch/Objective 1on1
- Enemy Territory Stopwatch 2on2
- Enemy Territory Stopwatch 3on3
- Enemy Territory Stopwatch 5on5
- Enemy Territory Stopwatch 6on6
- Enemy Territory Stopwatch 3on3 (BN)
- Enemy Territory Stopwatch 3on3 (PL)
- Enemy Territory Stopwatch 6on6 (PL)
- Enemy Territory Stopwatch 6on6 (UK)
- Enemy Territory Stopwatch 6on6 (IT)
- TCE Objective
N.B
- Noshow wins count as matches aswell, since it calculates any confirmed score, unfortunately the only way to remove noshow matches from being listed in this report, would be by manually checking every match, and by the time it would be done, I would have probably aged by another 20 years.
- Seasonal Ladder was not added as I need your feedback whether it should be included in the ladder report, should we consider it as a normal ladder?
- The automatch was forced for 2 weeks in the 6on6 Ladder during December 2009.
Conclusion
So, what do we do from here? As
TosspoT stated in his Column - Get up Off of yo' Ass!. I can't force you to play ladder matches, but would it hurt if every clan out there would join & play ladder matches instead of random irc wars which don't really count that much? I need you, Crossfire, to answer these questions. You, the community decides the future of ET! If you are interested in playing the ladders, here is the list of ladders available: http://clanbase.ggl.com/ladders.php?gid=25
Depending on the feedback i get, I will be making a monthly report and maybe a more in-depth analysis, so don't be shy to suggest & report ideas.
So according to the last graph, activity should pick up like it did in the past!
Total Matches played in 2009: 5538
??
there is no honour in being #1 at cb ladder, noone cares. why didnt you figure out a way to change this rather than making some graphs D:
oh and on a sidenote, people dont just randomly play praccs. u find a pracc often because u want to try a new defence, a new player, something radical maybe. why would u want these test results logged on some ladder?
for real clans you really need a ladder system.
others are 2 afraid to play ladder games cause they might loose
dont think anything will change the attitude of the players is just too fucked up
YOU MEAN S6?:PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP
:DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!
Don't think you needed to put so much effort in this to prove the obvious. What will you do with this report? :) Anyway at least well done for putting so much effort in it :)
If you don't care about placing good on the ladders, then why not do this? If more activity on the ladders make CB put more effort and maybe even cash into ET, then why not? It's an incredibly small effort for a potentially large reward.
you are pretty much screwed
We have other "ocassional" cups and tournaments, but ladders are always active and it's the perfect place to keep competition alive. I miss many teams on ladder nowadays, teams that are active and playing.
Like you say it doesnt take that much to play at least a match per week and all ET benefits from this having more variety of teams and players to challenge.
However in 2 years, that last paragraph is the only "promotion" I have seen for ladders.
Anyway I hope that forcing 5on5 and automatches gave you a lesson of what NOT to do and that more teams join CB ladder specially which for good or bad remains the most active ladder.
scrims lack the whee bit of tension that ladder games have, yet it has become way too repetitive playing against the same opponents in the 2on2/3on3 ladder already. it beats me as to why people that are registered on CB would play a prac instead of an official. it takes just about 2 minutes tops to create the challenge and another 30 seconds to accept one. scrims seem to end the very same way each and every time - whether your opponent jumps up screaming "HAHAHAHAH N1 WH" resulting in a kick in just about 2 minutes or you are playing against totally unknown poles spreading 80 headies per round. you pick.
the answer? an opencup for both formats !
In a perfect world any team that likes this game should join ladders as the key place to keep competition alive.
always when I ask 1on1 offi silly ctf, never play
Bring 6on6 back and promotion for the ladder, not in a lost article like this.
like cb 6v6 open cup from X to X.
this would give a better representation of how tournaments/cups/etc affected games.
additionally at least have Crossfire Lan @ X as i would feel that this would have the greatest impact to games played. or something along those lines.
without looking at other contingent factors those graphs are fairly useless.
be afraid