descentchampions.org

Challenges are serious, so there are limits how often they can be issued. You can only issue a challenge once every 15 days, and you can only receive one challenge every 15 days. And you cannot reissue a challenge to a pilot until 30 days have passed since you last challenged them.

So, I'm feeling like this is too restricting. Anyone else?

I could understand limiting how often/frequent I could formally challenge a particular pilot. I should not be able to challenge a pilot more often than once every 2 weeks. But after that challenge is met and I do not have a pending challenge or whatever...I should be able to challenge someone else without some arbitrary time limit forcing me to wait before I can challenge the next guy.

just my opinion...but I see some limits being placed on guys wanting to get challenges in that I think they should be able to get in and yet they can't cuz they challenged somebody else 14 days ago or something.

Thoughts?

I agree. In reality I could only force you to play me four times per season at best. I'd have to schedule it like clock work to get those four matches. That's kind of frustrating. Also, I'd only be able to issue an additional 4 challenges to other pilots during the season. I think the restrictions should be lessened.

These restrictions are meant to prevent people from abusing the system and harassing people day in and day out, but how it is currently set allows someone to abuse their spot on the ladder, for AT LEAST 14 days at a time, if they so choose to only accept formal challenges.



I'd love to see it limited to:

You can make a new challenge every 3 days.

You can only challenge one specific pilot every 14 days.



Also, I believe there should be a reasonable cap on how many matches one pilot can accept from the ladder per month (8 or 10?) to prevent people from being overloaded. That could be a little demanding, but I think that comes down to 3-4 hours a month? That's not so bad.


My thoughts

-Cyrus

NO LIMITS

I hear what you are saying LotharBot. I don't think challenges are not being taken seriously it's just that they also seem too restricting. I see no reason why I should not be able to challenge Mark392 twice a month if that's the only way I can get a match with him (that's just an example...not a shot at mark)

Well, they've sort of evolved over time, and I feel that's where the conflict is coming from.

They were designed as our defense against match dodging and rank sitting -- to let pilots enforce that as they saw fit. You had to have a reason to issue one (I want your rank/trophy/shot at your home level), and the only penalty was that if you didn't meet a challenge, you lost whatever you were sitting on. The first couple seasons they were never used. People preferred to arrange matches and/or to wait, even it it took more than a couple weeks. They were more of a theoretical threat than an actual one.

Last season, the ladder was a lot busier, and it was a different crowd. The challenges were used a lot more frequently, for callouts in general -- which was fun. We also saw them ignored a lot more frequently, as the penalty didn't really hurt if you weren't trying to hold on to something (and essentially nobody was). There were also people who wanted to use them to force inactive pilots to be active, or on people who had just joined the ladder -- which is really not what they're for.

When we discussed revising them for this season, we decided they represented what it meant to be active on the ladder. You had to be willing to play anyone. Even someone much better than you, or someone who was your kryptonite. So anyone can challenge anyone else for any reason. And if you're not willing to play, you should be inactive. Hence retiring for a couple weeks being a way to get out of a challenge. Same effect mechanically as being suspended, but it's voluntary.

So the question with challenges is, what is the minimum activity level required to be considered active on the ladder? How often should you have to play someone (or a group of people!) who really want to play you? Sure, most people could handle a couple matches a week, but these things aren't always timed well. You might have a weeklong vacation or a medical issue or something come up at a bad time. How bad does it have to be before you really shoulda retired? Two weeks works for me. It's actually a useful rule of thumb! I just went through something medical that took me out of the game for about a week. I thought, "Should I retire? Nah, I'll be back well before two weeks is up."

There is a tension here between "if you don't like someone don't play them" and "you should be prepared to face anyone". I think saying you're required to face a particular pilot -- any particular pilot -- once every thirty days is a pretty reasonable middle ground between the two.

But making the challenges reflect more of the old purpose -- for forcing people to play or retire -- means they don't serve the purpose they evolved into -- calling people out, arranging matches, just recording a desire to play someone. We might need something more different and lightweight for that. Speaking personally, I don't think being threatened with a two week suspension if I don't get a particular match done is a lot of fun, and it certainly isn't something I would want to have to deal with frequently . . . and I'm far from the most inactive pilot around. I will play anyone, and I want these to be a tool everyone has available, but I don't want it to be common and taken lightly, you know? Saying "I challenge you" rather than just "I'd like to play you" is like saying "I have to threaten you to make sure you show up." I'm glad you can threaten me, but I'd prefer you didn't.

It *would* be fun to have some sort of equivalent of IDL's gauntlet, though. I publicly want to face you in X circumstance! Take it or leave it, no penalty, but it's VERY PUBLIC either way! Even if we don't do that exactly, there does seem to be an itch here that isn't being scratched . . . but I don't think challenges are the tool for it.

The only thing that I'd change is that if you've completed a pending challenge, you should be open to challenge someone else instead of being idle. Likewise for being challenged. If you've met a challenge, you should be open to being challenged by someone else. In other words, eliminate the 15 day windows entirely, but keep it to only one challenge at a time, and keep the once per pilot per 30 days.

The one time I did get challenged basically was a "hey I haven't seen you around and would like to play you!" Which seems to fall under the category of "not what it's for". Not that I take offense, I mean... it's not like people were clear on the intent of the function even in this thread.

I think people like that might need a similar but different function. I really don't mind getting "paged" by e-mail if someone wants to play me even if it's non-binding. As long as they don't start to spam it, because my low match count isn't for no reason - it's a lot of things competing for limited free time. But between that and the fact that I'm not on Mumble every night (basically for the same reason), poking me via Facebook or e-mail might actually be the best ways of getting games in. A "match request" via the website would sort of streamline that, especially if it came bundled with a "schedule this match" thread where we can negotiate times.

(Would be great for promotion/demotion challenges too, actually.)

And there I go asking Drakona to do more stuff... I should know better