Rigged Wiki:News/New host and policy announcements

New host and policy announcements

2014/08/18

Yesterday saw DrBorisG stepping down from his job as host after roughly a year in charge. With that came the announcement of his successor - starting from yesterday Tottori became the new host of the 4chan Cup. His first official event will be the 2014 4chan Autumn Babby Cup. To begin the job Tottori announced wide ranging reforms to just about everything from polls to pitch colours. The following is the meat and bones of his announcement.

Hi. I'm tottori, the new worst commissioner ever!

Since 2011 the boards of 4chan have competed on the field for the unrivalled honor of being crowned champions.

This is the ideal of the Cup. Back in the day before the first Cup in 2011, GB went around to various boards anonymously and tried to get their input as to who should be on their team. This didn't exactly work out so well, but such is life on 4chan. When the first Cup happened, several boards got into it and wanted to take more direct control of their teams. Eventually this turned into the manager system (unsurprisingly, it's a goddamn mess to organize a team via total 4chan anarchy).

But the reality since then has been that sometimes it has been less 'the boards of 4chan' and more the underentertained youth of Ireland internet roleplaying as the boards of 4chan. Sometimes it has been less the boards of 4chan and more the mercenary managers vaguely going through the motions of representing the boards of 4chan. Sometimes it actually has been the boards of 4chan, however, and when that happens a lot of people show up, people get excited, OC starts being posted, and >fun tends to happen. We need more of that.

If there is going to be one organizing principle behind my tenure, it is to put the boards of 4chan back at the center of everything we do. Yes, the mods kill our threads >for free. Yes, moot doesn't give a rat's ass about us (or his website in general lately amirite). It doesn't matter. These things can be overcome, craftily snuck around, or otherwise thwarted by the creativity (and/or general recalcitrant obnoxiousness) of motivated anons.

The most important thing for a manager to do is to engage with the people of their board and find out what they want to do with their team. Because it is the board's team. Yeah, the competitive aspect is a fun part too, but make no mistake. Before we were aimlessly starting to become the dumbest, most autistic D-tier e-sport on the planet, we were the World Cup of 4chan: a celebration of imageboard culture and the personification of the monumental wastes of time and energy that makes it all happen. That is who we are.

Anyway, here's what I intend to try and accomplish during my tenure. (inb4 everything fails)

RULES STUFF

Livemanaging rules are going to be streamlined. Instead of do-this-don't-do-this, the old rig timer is going to be dusted off and put into practice. You'll get 4 minutes per game, a maximum of 3 used to set up pre-game. It doesn't matter what you do, just don't take all damn day doing it. Use your presets to save time.

PROCEDURAL STUFF

With apologies to Tinker's ghost, we're going back to deadline before draw because pursuant to the rig timer rules, I want people to put actual stuff they can use in their preset instead of a bunch of decoy shit that needs to be unrigged as soon as the game starts.

STADIUM STUFF

There is going to be a crackdown on overly bright or saturated pitch textures. If you can't see a white ball on top of your pitch, then I am not going to load up your stadium.

FUTURE STUFF

Autumn will be the last go for 14. In general I was not very personally pleased with how the 14 move turned out. It seemed hopeful at first, but then as it turned out 14 was a sort of half-baked still-kind-of-beta new engine commercial flop that sent practically the entire PES modding community into deep hibernation and pushed "JAPAN STRONK!" Konami itself scrambling to outsource some Brits to try and patch the gaping hole in their franchise.

These are the things the next home of the Cup needs to have:

• Player model editing capability (blenders)
• An ability to actually see the damn models most of the time (LoD)
• Asset replacement (changing stadium, sign, logo, crowd, etc etc textures)
• A third-party editor that isn't horribly barely-functional (ripip PEES)
• At least decent in-game player customization (if you're not a 3D wizard, i.e. most of us)
• working 'coach mode' types of stuff (in that most changes seem to have actual effects)
• A lack of crappy 14-type play wonkiness (no corner headers, extremely limited foul detection, AI players doing the Truffle Shuffle on the pitch, etc)
• The more gameplay tweaking capability (a good speeder, replay control, ball physics etc) the better

Hopefully PES 2015 turns out to be less shit and is the hero we deserve so we can move along the Fox engine stuff. Or maybe somebody will work out a good implementation with Feefur 14 or 15 and that becomes an good option. (hint hint, interested testers)

RUINING THE CUP FOREVER STUFF

So here's the deal. As I see it, these are the responsibilities of a manager in order from most important to least important.

1. Engage with the board and find out what they want their team to look like.
2. Make the roster in accordance to the board's wishes and keep it updated.
3. Do aesthetic stuff: make (or find a creative person to make) kits, try to make your players look non-generic and sort of representative of what they're based off of.
4. Provide legal and correct exports before the entry deadline.
5. Don't make avoidable messes that require the commisioner to have to intervene/sort out/arbitrate/whatever (Durgen, Tinker, M3OW, Zyzz, etc)
6. Have fun!
7. Try to livemanage your team to victory or at the very least avoid abject humiliating defeat.

      .
      .
      .

999. Spend a gazillion hours testing your tactical genius in total isolation from the rest of the world.

You may notice that livemanaging is near the bottom of the list. As such, my plan to RUIN THE CUP FOREVER is pretty straightforward: Managers who don't do the stuff higher on the list may not get to do the stuff below it on the list. (Well, technically you can always spend a gazillion hours in your basement ignoring the outside world with or without my approval.) I said I was going to put the boards of 4chan back central to the Cup, and pretty much the only real enforcement mechanism I have is whether or not I use the controller to put in your gameday instructions. So that's how it'll work.

As a former community guy, I understand that we do not exactly have the most ideal environment to go sourcing board input. Threads are generally banned, the Cup is filtered, stuff like that. However, it isn't completely hopeless either. We have a bunch of twitch watchers. We have a growing amount of Twitter followers. We have fans who regularly read the wiki for news. We have a /vg/ thread (okay, maybe that one is less not completely hopeless).

I am working on a central site that will help you manage your roster and do polling and basically handle the entire technical side to get you that input. As a side result it will enable other things, like automatic wiki roster code creation, a height worksheet, and maybe even our own fantasy football website eventually. Might farm out that last one to /g/ though. (In theory the central site was supposed to be mostly done by now, but webdev. Anyway, it'll be ready in a few days.)

I will open up our shared resources to help you get fans to your poll. I'm not going to tell you that you have to go buy a board ad (although protip: they honestly do work, so if you want to be money-losing scheme now, I reccommend it. Make sure your ad banner is legible though coughExeccough). But I do need to see that managers are making an honest effort to try and figure out what their board wants with their team. You don't need to get 200 votes like /a/ does. (Frankly, if /po/ got 200 votes that would basically be the surest case of voter fraud ever.) You just need to get some authentic input from your boards and put it into action.

I want you to succeed in this, not fail. I will do what I can to help.

If your board absolutely, totally refuses to care, however, that is their perogative. We do not need to be in the business of forcing the nahc4 puC on uninterested boards. No teams are getting shut down. You can still operate the team; you will just be put on lineup by form, flex subs, automatic preset switching etc.

Here is basically the order of operations:

1. Tottori gets the roster/poll system working this week.
2. Tottori creates system accounts for managers. (this will probably include some kind of stop in IRC/post something on the wiki combo to verify you're the right person)
3. Managers fill out their roster info on the system.
4. Managers set up any additional info about their team they want on the poll besides the generic roster, music, medals, and verification votes.
5. Poll gets finished and is available for voting.
6. Tottori hypes the poll on the wiki, twitter, twitch, etc.
7. Manager does other stuff to try and get the board involved in the poll.
8. After a week or whatever, add up poll results and give to the manager.
9. If poll results are low, talk to the manager and see if there are extenuating circumstances or anything else that could have been done.
10. Team is either confirmed active for a year or designated as sleepy.

REGARDING THE FETUS STUFF (AND MORE RUINING THE CUP)

This is going to be the most controversial: not-sleepy teams are going to be excused from the fetus, i.e. they will get an automatic promotion to the babbies, but only from the fetus to the babbies, and only over sleepy teams.

In effect, this sets the field for Babby Cups in the following order:

1. Active teams relegated from the elite
2. Active teams that failed to advance from the previous babby
3. Active teams in the fetus zone, by previous finish position
4. —
5. Sleepy teams relegated from the elite cup, by previous finish position
6. Sleepy teams that did not promote from last babby cup, by previous finish position
7. It's mathematically impossible to fit sleepy teams already in the fetus zone into the babby field of 32.

Going forward 4) will be reserved for sleepy teams in the babby or fetus zone that did not play in the last babby competition, so nobody gets locked out of the Cup forever.

We will also skip a fetus if it is totally full of unmanaged sleepy teams where would be PES is playing itself, because literally who wants to watch that? (Actually this is the wrong thread to ask that question.) However, if there are more active teams than can fit in the Babby, then a small fetus-style group stage will be held to make the necessary eliminations. The moral of the story is engage your board and don't be sleepy.

Here is the thing. I feel like I should give teams that already have done polls a pass to be counted as active. For one, they did it when they didn't have to. For two, it's kind of stupid to go say to like, McBob, HEY BRO I KNOW YOU JUST RAN A POLL BUT RUN ANOTHER ONE YAH? Also, in DeMessi's case you cannot tell me that the /vg/ league is not a great example of community engagement. (Yes, it helps that threads are allowed on his board, but he goes over and above the call of duty with the VGL).

That said, I'm not going to promote /a/ to active since I kind of ran that poll myself and that's a bit of a conflict of approving my own shit type thing. (although it's not like I haven't set up /a/ to practically demand their next poll at this point, either)

Anyway, let me work out the current Babby field as it shakes out right now in the next post. This is the current Babby format:

• Pot 1 (finished 3rd in group, Summer '14)
  • /sp/, /k/, /e/, /v/, /mlp/, /a/, /soc/, /tg/ (in no particular order)
• Pot 2 (finished 4th in group, Summer '14)
  • /trv/, /wg/, /b/, /ck/, /lgbt/, /cgl/, /pol/, /gif/ (in no particular order)
• Pot 3 (finished 3rd in group, Spring '14)
  • /b/, /s/
  • /co/ and /o/ tied on Pts/GD/GF
  • /fit/
  • /g/ and /y/ tied on Pts/GD/GF
  • /c/
• Pot 4 (finished 4th in group Spring '14 or active Fetus-zone)
  • /jp/, /tv/, /r9k/, /lit/, /int/, /sci/
  • /vp/ and /vr/ - made polls and are active
• Inactive sleepy teams (finished 5th in Spring, or lowest ranking from Pot 4 bumped by active Fetus teams)
  • /n/ - 7th of 8 pot 4 teams
  • /hm/ - 8th of 8 pot 4 teams
  • /cm/, /3/, /adv/, /out/, /d/, /m/
  • /biz/ (enters play ranked 57th)

If they all remain sleepy, /n/, /hm/, /cm/, /3/, /adv/, /out/, /d/, /m/, and /biz/ will be the first sleepy teams used to fill the field in Spring 2015 as compensation for missing a tournament. If one of them becomes active, then /sci/ will be bumped out as the lowest ranked sleepy team, and so on.

Also I should go find an authoritative list of boards who have done polls instead of relying on vague memory as that is kind of important now.

Reaction and follow-up to the news can be found in this thread.