Ever since raza coded the most recent software for the site, Crossfire has been running a tournament for the top clans in ET, and over that period, we've gathered some interesting observations - things that only come via experience.
It's always nice to share what goes on behind the scenes with you, the public, who only get to see the end product 99% of the time. Let's give you the story so far:
A fella named iCed came to me in IRC with this idea called "Enemy Territory Challengers". He wanted help with it, and I reckoned Crossfire was just the medium which would be able to make his vision a reality. Therefore I explained to raza the situation and he agreed, and began to churn out some early code. While all this was in development, we began the task of advertising the competition. Now of course you all know of the koth, but at this time nothing had even been mentioned before. So I spent 10 or so minutes prepping the newspost, and copied over the clanlist iCed had prepared, whilst mentioning his "company" a few times mainly as a token of thanks for the idea, and allowing XF to use it.
But then things started to turn bad. All of a sudden raza read the news and thought that iCed was hijacking Crossfire to suit his own purposes, not helped by his outspoken comments such as "I'll be taking over now" and "I'm the CEO". I personally didn't like this attitude, but thought that talking to him first would cool things down and get everything back on track. However, by the time I had logged onto IRC, I was being told by raza than iCed would no longer have anything to do with Crossfire...we were running the koth by ourselves...and that he was going offline. Cue an extremely angry and upset iCed pm'ing me demanding he be let back in, that Crossfire had used&abused him, stolen his idea. And you know what? He was 100% right. What raza had done was hugely arrogant, not because he is like that, not at all. But because he was overprotective of his Crossfire site, which he had singlehandedly (argueably) given birth to and cultivated into the premier ET site on the web. This put me in a tricky situation. I couldn't let iCed back on board because of raza who refused flat out to have him back, but without whom there would be no software, and therefore no means of hosting a koth tournament. None of the other admins were willing to talk to the guy, so it was left to me to implement damage limitation. It did get ugly.. at one point we had iCed banned from #crossfire and the site. He knew he couldn't run his vision without Crossfire - the site which had just snubbed him, and was justifyably trying to take down as many people as he could with him.
Anyway, the show had to go on, and so we advertised for clans to play in the first match, with the competition format still being changed almost daily. The web system we have is primitive to say the least. Admins only can add clans to the database, and from the clan page to the match page, its all a glorified info page. We have absolutely zero clan web interface for clans to challenge each other, zero clan management systems in place (admins only can change clan details). Take arranging matches for example. We actively had to ask clans on more than one occasion if they wanted to play, rather than the way intended where the clans themselves came forward looking for games. Then you had arranging the dates for games. I wanted to use a lax system where clans could agree on the best times to suit them rather than use a fixed date and time for games to be played - with the idea being this would allow more games to take place. The reality was that people got pissed off with asking one team in turn for their best times, which then turned out to be bad for the other clan, and if you gave in to either one you then were faced with stroppy "highskilled" players demanding to not play because in a matter of words, things were unfair.
However one of the many positive things we experienced was the ettv coverage, which gtv.org helped to streamline superbly, with games always receiving ettv slots reaching into the hundreds. Towards the last game between highbot and rize (could anything more have gone wrong?), I was increasingly feeling the need to stop and put right what was going wrong. Don't confuse this for lacking interest, I was and still am interested, but I had no intention whatsoever in carrying on what I thought was a sinking ship. This is in part what I will put down to the lack of matchreport for that game - I had no desire to give coverage for something that was not going how I wanted. And considering it is me who does 98% of work on the koth (not boasting, just how it is), I feel I have every right to run it how I feel it should. Looking back, we've had some great games, no less the hx-nd game. But I think the time is right to call it a day for now, and instead concentrate on getting it right for the next time. And next time we can talk about.
As the title of this little piece goes, the trial is over. We ran this competition from scratch, with the only adminning I've done before coming from CB reffing (really unrewarding, props to lab). We've had many ups, a fair share of downs, but the experience means that we can now see what is going wrong and why, so it can be fixed. The KOTH is far from dead, it's just undergoing repairs for now. So when can we expect to see it back on our screens? Well I'll save you the usual "it'll be bigger and better" blurb, the fact of the matter is the King of the Hill competition will be back for the launch of Crossfire 3, which is coming rather sooner than you might think. By doing this, I hope you can see what we've acomplished and come from, and why I'm doing what I'm doing. After all, its our competition, all of ours, and it deserves to run as well as it can for all of us.
You may be wondering what happened to our friend iCed. Well, if you didn't already know, he is aka xRio, the guy behind the Game On interviews.
It's always nice to share what goes on behind the scenes with you, the public, who only get to see the end product 99% of the time. Let's give you the story so far:
A fella named iCed came to me in IRC with this idea called "Enemy Territory Challengers". He wanted help with it, and I reckoned Crossfire was just the medium which would be able to make his vision a reality. Therefore I explained to raza the situation and he agreed, and began to churn out some early code. While all this was in development, we began the task of advertising the competition. Now of course you all know of the koth, but at this time nothing had even been mentioned before. So I spent 10 or so minutes prepping the newspost, and copied over the clanlist iCed had prepared, whilst mentioning his "company" a few times mainly as a token of thanks for the idea, and allowing XF to use it.
But then things started to turn bad. All of a sudden raza read the news and thought that iCed was hijacking Crossfire to suit his own purposes, not helped by his outspoken comments such as "I'll be taking over now" and "I'm the CEO". I personally didn't like this attitude, but thought that talking to him first would cool things down and get everything back on track. However, by the time I had logged onto IRC, I was being told by raza than iCed would no longer have anything to do with Crossfire...we were running the koth by ourselves...and that he was going offline. Cue an extremely angry and upset iCed pm'ing me demanding he be let back in, that Crossfire had used&abused him, stolen his idea. And you know what? He was 100% right. What raza had done was hugely arrogant, not because he is like that, not at all. But because he was overprotective of his Crossfire site, which he had singlehandedly (argueably) given birth to and cultivated into the premier ET site on the web. This put me in a tricky situation. I couldn't let iCed back on board because of raza who refused flat out to have him back, but without whom there would be no software, and therefore no means of hosting a koth tournament. None of the other admins were willing to talk to the guy, so it was left to me to implement damage limitation. It did get ugly.. at one point we had iCed banned from #crossfire and the site. He knew he couldn't run his vision without Crossfire - the site which had just snubbed him, and was justifyably trying to take down as many people as he could with him.
Anyway, the show had to go on, and so we advertised for clans to play in the first match, with the competition format still being changed almost daily. The web system we have is primitive to say the least. Admins only can add clans to the database, and from the clan page to the match page, its all a glorified info page. We have absolutely zero clan web interface for clans to challenge each other, zero clan management systems in place (admins only can change clan details). Take arranging matches for example. We actively had to ask clans on more than one occasion if they wanted to play, rather than the way intended where the clans themselves came forward looking for games. Then you had arranging the dates for games. I wanted to use a lax system where clans could agree on the best times to suit them rather than use a fixed date and time for games to be played - with the idea being this would allow more games to take place. The reality was that people got pissed off with asking one team in turn for their best times, which then turned out to be bad for the other clan, and if you gave in to either one you then were faced with stroppy "highskilled" players demanding to not play because in a matter of words, things were unfair.
However one of the many positive things we experienced was the ettv coverage, which gtv.org helped to streamline superbly, with games always receiving ettv slots reaching into the hundreds. Towards the last game between highbot and rize (could anything more have gone wrong?), I was increasingly feeling the need to stop and put right what was going wrong. Don't confuse this for lacking interest, I was and still am interested, but I had no intention whatsoever in carrying on what I thought was a sinking ship. This is in part what I will put down to the lack of matchreport for that game - I had no desire to give coverage for something that was not going how I wanted. And considering it is me who does 98% of work on the koth (not boasting, just how it is), I feel I have every right to run it how I feel it should. Looking back, we've had some great games, no less the hx-nd game. But I think the time is right to call it a day for now, and instead concentrate on getting it right for the next time. And next time we can talk about.
As the title of this little piece goes, the trial is over. We ran this competition from scratch, with the only adminning I've done before coming from CB reffing (really unrewarding, props to lab). We've had many ups, a fair share of downs, but the experience means that we can now see what is going wrong and why, so it can be fixed. The KOTH is far from dead, it's just undergoing repairs for now. So when can we expect to see it back on our screens? Well I'll save you the usual "it'll be bigger and better" blurb, the fact of the matter is the King of the Hill competition will be back for the launch of Crossfire 3, which is coming rather sooner than you might think. By doing this, I hope you can see what we've acomplished and come from, and why I'm doing what I'm doing. After all, its our competition, all of ours, and it deserves to run as well as it can for all of us.
You may be wondering what happened to our friend iCed. Well, if you didn't already know, he is aka xRio, the guy behind the Game On interviews.
