Community Event Ideas Compendium

[redria]

What is This

This thread will be dedicated to the invention and discussion of events and the details that make said events good. If you already have a fully fledged idea, I will update the OP quickly. Otherwise I will wait for the idea to get hashed out into a firm plan before updating. If an event is taken into production, that event would be listed in the community events thread as appropriate.

If a host likes one of the events listed and wishes to handle starting and running the event, they should contact the parent of the idea to collect any further details the parent may have on their idea. This does not mean a host cannot take an idea from this thread and run with it, but that it would be respectful, and might save time, to ask the parent of the idea if there are any details not mentioned/key factors that they feel must be included.

Things you should include for a brief synopsis:

Play tier:
 - Premiere: Cogs/Sky League level. Every clan who is anybody needs to be there. This is the most serious of events. Be ready to fight tooth and nail.
 - Competitive: As the title suggests, a competitive event. Clans who are available may join in for a good fight to see who comes out on top.
 - Relaxed: This event may not have a definitive winner. I'm not sure what event would fit this category, but we have some creative people here. Someone will come up with something.

Parent: The creator. Primarily the point of contact for further details on the event

Duration:
 - Short: 1-2 week event.
 - Medium: ~1 month event.
 - Long: ~2-3 month event.

Density (day/week):
 - Low/*: Teams play a single match the day of the event and are done for the day.
 - Medium/*: Teams may play several matches the day of the event.
 - High/*: Teams will play several matches the day of the event.
 - */Low: The event will only occur once a week.
 - */Medium: The event occurs multiple times throughout a week.
 - */High: The event occurs every day of the week.

Number of ships required per team entering

Flexibility:
 - High: Teams may interchange members between matches, change loadouts, change ships, etc.
 - Medium: Teams are allowed limited ability to use substitutes, change ship builds, or change loadouts.
 - Low: Teams are allowed little to no opportunity to change members, ships, loadouts, etc.

Details: A basic rundown on how the event will work

Examples of previously run events:

Sunday Rumble:
Play Tier: Competitive
Parent: Urz
Duration: Short
Density: High/Low
Number of Ships Needed: 2
Flexibility: High
Details: A casual competitive one day tournament. Teams are seeded randomly when sign-ups close 1 hour prior to the event. A single elimination, best of 3 bracket is run to determine the winner. A soft time limit rule is in effect to ensure matches end with a winner in a reasonable amount of time.

Flotsam Dynasty Campaign:
Play Tier: Competitive
Parent: The Ducks
Duration: Short
Density: High/High
Number of Ships Needed: 2
Flexibility: Medium
Details: A campaign featuring a tournament every day for 6 consecutive days. Each daily tournament takes place on a separate map. Teams may sign up for as many or as few days as they wish. The winner of each daily tournament is declared the title holder of that map. After the campaign, this title is up for grabs and may be taken from the holding team by defeating the holding team in battle. At the end of the 6th tournament, the team holding the most titles is declared the winner of the Flotsam Dynasty Campaign, a permanent title.

===================================================

Ideas Compendium

Premier Level Events:

League Play:
Parent: redria (Currently being discussed at https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,3799.0.html)
Duration: Long
Density: Low/Low
Number of Ships Needed: 2
Flexibility: Medium
Details: Similar to American Football, this is a competitive league with a defined season, scheduled start times, time limits, and of course playoffs.
Signups close 1 week prior to the first weekend of seasonal play. On the Wednesday prior to the first day of competition, a schedule for the season will be released. The schedule will include start times, opponents, and maps for each team. Each team will play a single best of 1 match each week. The time limit for this match will be 30 minutes. Matches will begin every 40 minutes. Teams have a buffer period of 5 minutes at the scheduled start time of each match. If they fail to have 2 captains readied up before that buffer ends, they forfeit the match. Cheating will also result in forfeiture. Teams with 2 forfeits will be ejected for the duration of the season. A new schedule will be released the Wednesday prior to the next day of competition.
Every team will play a single match every week of the regular season unless a single bye week is needed due to an odd number of teams entering.
At the end of a 7 week regular season, there will be a week off, followed by a single day of playoffs. The playoffs will feature the teams with the top 4 winning percentages playing a small bracket. Semifinals feature a best of 3. Finals will play best of 5. Winner of the finals will be crowned the champion of the season.

Competitive Level Events:

Solo Challenge:
Parent: redria
Duration: Long
Density: Low/Low
Number of Ships Needed: 1
Flexibility: Low
Details: This event is a challenge to all players. Form up a single crew of 4 players. Choose your ship. Choose your ship loadout. Choose your crew loadouts. Enter into a 1v1 tournament to find out what ship is the ruler of the skies.
Signups close 1 week prior to the event. A bracket is created, scheduling each ship against one another with specified maps. Each matchup has 1 week to complete their battle. They will arrange a time to meet and fight. A ref/caster will record in spectator while 2 neutral captains take over the extra ships. The extra ships will be piloted to a neutral, predetermined location and are off limits for the duration, with no spotting/communication allowed. Any attack on these ships results in forfeit.
The 2 competing ships battle to 5 kills, with the winner advancing up the bracket.

Risk Game:
Play Tier: Not really sure. Anybody, but high level teams have a huge advantage.
Parent: Keon (Similar concept previously presented by Thomas at https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,2721.0.html)
Duration: Very Long
Density: Medium
Number of Ships Needed: 2-4, as organized on a per-match basis
Flexibility: High - teams are allowed to hire "mercs", form treaties and alliances (including having players play for other teams, and scramble loadouts.)
Details: Teams play a standard game of Risk, the turn-based strategy game, on a map based on the GOI world. Clan leaders make decisions via forum post and PM, and the OP is updated with an updating image of the game board. Clans/teams receive reinforcements based on territory controlled, and can be deployed normally, like Risk. The difference comes in attacking/defending. The attacking team and defending team must organize a game of GOI to decide the battle's fate. For example, if Ducks attack Cake, and ducks have 5 ships in Paratius attacking Kian, who is defending with 3 ships, the two will go into a battle. As soon as the ducks get 3 kills, or the cakes get 5 kills, the match is over, and scores reported to the threadmaster. Say the ducks win 3-4. (That's still a win, even though cake killed more ships. Strength of numbers prevails.) That means that they capture the territory, as they killed all three airships above Kian, but they have lost 4 airships, leaving only 1 to occupy Kian. Cake and all the other clans can attack at the same time, etc.

Relaxed Level Events:

Miscellaneous Info from Thread:

[redria]

I am including this as a separate post in case the OP becomes longer than 1 post permits. I want this to be a discussion and creativity thread. Feel free to discuss any aspect of events that you feel should be discussed, such as the benefits/drawbacks of BO1 vs BO3, tournament vs league vs cogs, etc. If you are looking to start an event, give the thread a quick read through to see if you have any questions/concerns about your event that have been addressed by the community already.

Thank you.

[DMaximus]

I'd really love to see some kind of league like the one you wrote about. I thought that was what the Sky League was going to be, but it turned out to be a normal tournament, just spread out over a longer period of time. Cogs was an interesting idea and all, but I could never figure out who we were supposed to be playing and the bye-month or so in the lower cogs was annoying. There's a reason most sports use a league system. It's simple and ensures every team plays regularly.

[redria]

I'd really love to see some kind of league like the one you wrote about. I thought that was what the Sky League was going to be, but it turned out to be a normal tournament, just spread out over a longer period of time. Cogs was an interesting idea and all, but I could never figure out who we were supposed to be playing and the bye-month or so in the lower cogs was annoying. There's a reason most sports use a league system. It's simple and ensures every team plays regularly.

I wrote up a lot more rules for that league. I was hoping to push it at Leto for a future event, and he may or may not have looked at it. I think someone at Muse may have also read through my theoretical rule system.
I would love to see it happen as well, and with set start times you could actually advertise to friends saying you are competing at a specific time, not just "oh, sometime around 4ish."

It would take about 2 months to run fully, and I feel like most premier events should take around 2 months. The community could probably handle 4 different premier events each year, with 1 month off between each. That one month could hold some of the competitive level events. Relaxed events could possibly just operate around the year if someone came up with ideas for it. Probably something like races and such.

Variety is the spice of life. 4 unique premier events, with interspersed competitive and relaxed events would allow teams to play hard in interesting, non-repetitive events, while allowing for events to goof off and try crazy builds together. Which naturally they can do anyway, but it is fun to make it official.

[Battle Toads]

I think that the OP is mainly focused on competitive stuff, but how about an event that takes place over a few months that involves people sending in drawings/3d art of some sort of customization item. And at the end of the event, Muse picks maybe 3 items to be added to the game and the creators of those items might get a special prize or a part of the money earned by selling their items on the customization store (similar to TF2).

[redria]

I think that the OP is mainly focused on competitive stuff, but how about an event that takes place over a few months that involves people sending in drawings/3d art of some sort of customization item. And at the end of the event, Muse picks maybe 3 items to be added to the game and the creators of those items might get a special prize or a part of the money earned by selling their items on the customization store (similar to TF2).

Fascinating! I like it! Unfortunately, I think only Muse could really host something like this. If anyone were to host an art competition (even for no prize) the results would be fairly subjective. Muse being more professional would be able to make judgement calls based on what they saw.
I would put this in the relaxed tier, with most of the suggested fields being left out because, well, they are completely irrelevant for art.

Write up a solid posting and I will get it added to the OP. If it gets discussed and hashed out some more maybe I/someone-more-important-than-me can send an email to Muse suggesting it.

[Omniraptor]

if it was an art competition, something along the lines of RSI's TNGS would be amazing to watch, and would give a lot of insight into how the ships are designed and made, maybe even opening up more possibilities for gameplay. Muse is looking for a new artist right now, they might be receptive.

The stuff made by fans on TNGS (certainly the weapons) is often actually better than what cloud imperium themselves have done (so far), so I think if we could replicate this WITH AIRSHIPS it would be really cool.

Speaking of which, what happened to lordfunpants? haven't heard from him in a while.

[Captain Smollett]

Ideas Compendium

Premier Level Events:

League Play:
Parent: redria
Duration: Long
Density: Low/Low
Number of Ships Needed: 2
Flexibility: Medium
Details: Similar to American Football, this is a competitive league with a defined season, scheduled start times, time limits, and of course playoffs.
Signups close 1 week prior to the first weekend of seasonal play. On the Wednesday prior to the first day of competition, a schedule for the season will be released. The schedule will include start times, opponents, and maps for each team. Each team will play a single best of 1 match each week. The time limit for this match will be 30 minutes. Matches will begin every 40 minutes. Teams have a buffer period of 5 minutes at the scheduled start time of each match. If they fail to have 2 captains readied up before that buffer ends, they forfeit the match. Cheating will also result in forfeiture. Teams with 2 forfeits will be ejected for the duration of the season. A new schedule will be released the Wednesday prior to the next day of competition.
Every team will play a single match every week of the regular season unless a single bye week is needed due to an odd number of teams entering.
At the end of a 7 week regular season, there will be a week off, followed by a single day of playoffs. The playoffs will feature the teams with the top 4 winning percentages playing a small bracket. Semifinals feature a best of 3. Finals will play best of 5. Winner of the finals will be crowned the champion of the season.

I'd like to speak more about this, because I think it's amazing and exactly what GOI needs.  I love this idea and was actually talking about something similar just the other day with someone.

If Muse were to get behind it, the standings could be integrated into the website weekly and perhaps even shown in game with some of the new ui being developed.

It seems like a great way for all teams to be able to play a highly competitive match every week while only needing to commit to 30 minutes of their weekend.

If we could construct this in a way that all the competitive teams were interested in joining and all the casters were interested in casting you could easily make two separate leagues of 8-10 teams.  Each league could play simultaneously on two different twitch channels with the entire event taking less than 2 and a half hours every week.  Viewers could pick and choose which matches to watch and tune in to the ones that interested them most since they'd know what time the match would be taking place.

These leagues would be populated randomly with no bearing to the teams perceived skill or history.  In this system all teams within their league could play each other once taking roughly 7-9 weeks.  At the end instead of a 4 team playoff you could take the best 4 teams from each league and make a tournament which was seeded based off the teams league performance ie the top seed of league 1 would play the 4th seed of league 2 etc.

tl;dr I think GOI has been waiting a long time for a league, if we were able to work together to make this happen in a manner that accommodates all teams, it would be an amazing testament to our community.

[redria]

I'd like to speak more about this, because I think it's amazing and exactly what GOI needs.  I love this idea and was actually talking about something similar just the other day with someone.

If Muse were to get behind it, the standings could be integrated into the website weekly and perhaps even shown in game with some of the new ui being developed.

It seems like a great way for all teams to be able to play a highly competitive match every week while only needing to commit to 30 minutes of their weekend.

If we could construct this in a way that all the competitive teams were interested in joining and all the casters were interested in casting you could easily make two separate leagues of 8-10 teams.  Each league could play simultaneously on two different twitch channels with the entire event taking less than 2 and a half hours every week.  Viewers could pick and choose which matches to watch and tune in to the ones that interested them most since they'd know what time the match would be taking place.

These leagues would be populated randomly with no bearing to the teams perceived skill or history.  In this system all teams within their league could play each other once taking roughly 7-9 weeks.  At the end instead of a 4 team playoff you could take the best 4 teams from each league and make a tournament which was seeded based off the teams league performance ie the top seed of league 1 would play the 4th seed of league 2 etc.

tl;dr I think GOI has been waiting a long time for a league, if we were able to work together to make this happen in a manner that accommodates all teams, it would be an amazing testament to our community.

Thank you.

When the sky league was in the works, I thought we would be getting something similar to this, since the sky league was to be the replacement for Cogs: a weekly competition where teams get to play regularly and at the end of the season, the top teams are seeded into a tournament/playoffs that culminates in a champion.
I was disappointed when the sky league was revealed: not because it isn't awesome, but because it still wasn't what I wanted. So I raged and wrote up a rule set for what I wanted that wouldn't be a horrendous burden on casters, wouldn't be complicated, and would let people play every week. The couple people I shared my idea with loved it. Then I never managed to get it moving.

If you want to keep discussing, the in depth guide is at https://docs.google.com/document/d/110iL4Enh6PNzVYrqpClcCiLz5sSt6rKQOg5B_BmnVzQ/edit?usp=sharing. I am happy to open editing privileges to anyone who wants to work on cleaning it up. We can discuss here or in comments on the document. Or if you feel my summary here is the right direction and the rest of my ideas regarding the league are the wrong direction, we can start fresh here. ^.^

[Captain Smollett]

Just read the google doc.  Definitely really well thought out.

I guess the question still remains on how to keep people interested in the league if they get mathematically eliminated.

I suppose the way to do that would be to make it more difficult or even impossible to get mathematically eliminated. 

For example.

The top 33% or so (let's say 6 out of 18 teams) of the league could get the top seeds and an automatic bid into the playoffs.  You could then potentially hold an end of season wildcard mini tournament that's seeded from the regular season for the remaining (lets say 3 ) slots in the playoffs.  This would give incentive for people to play well in the season, not just for glory but for good seeds and guaranteed spots while still leaving hope for all teams for a come from behind victory.


This is just an idea.  I'm curious to hear what other people think, especially competitive players and captains.

[redria]

Interesting. There would need to be an incentive to be a better seed if you don't claim one of the automatic bids. Perhaps the higher seed in each of the wild card round would get to choose their spawn, or would get some say on which map(s) are played. This would encourage teams to fight harder to have some say on how the wild card round is run, other than getting a bye on the first round or 2.

I like the idea... and doing the math, if it ran using BO1 then it wouldn't take too much longer than standard play during a regular season week.
Every team plays during the regular season week (1).
66% of teams play during the first round of the wild card tourney (2/3).
Half those teams play the next round (1/3 + 2/3)
Half those teams play the next round (1/6 + 1/3 + 2/3)
etc etc. The total isn't going to be more than ~1.3 times as long as a normal week of play. Assuming a 3 hour normal week, that becomes a 4 hour wild card tourney. Not awful considering teams would be playing games quickly without some of the absurd wait times we have seen in other competitions. I think I could get behind this.

[Thomas]

Love the idea, you should try working with Keyvias to get this as the official competitive scene. Right now we have something mildly similar, where teams compete with each other and try to collect points, then the top teams enter the official tournament. Right now it's pretty loosely structured with a lot of responsibility on the teams to organize their own matches. I know that they're working on coming up with something new and better currently, and this is an amazing candidate.



I do like the idea of having some wildcard slots, so even if someone is mathematically eliminated, they still have motivation to keep playing and trying for one of those slots.

Not a big fan of the best of 3 or best of 5 though. I like the level of excitement that a best of 1 brings. And that would allow for multiple leagues to play on the same day. (Lets say the top 4 teams go to the Gold League with 2 wildcards, then the next best 4 go to the Silver League with their two wildcards. And so on, depending upon the number of teams). Ooh, and if this becomes a thing, and it totally should, what about a fantasy GoIO team (like fantasy football, of which I have a very inadequate grasp of)? Players making their own fantasy GoIO teams and getting points for their performance in the league (mostly parts destroyed, rebuilt, wins, etc. Anything that can be tracked from the spectator slot).

But that's just me getting very carried away with the idea. I still like the concept of a best of 1 throughout however.

[redria]

:O

Ok, so for clarification, we need to define some terms.
League: The event. Everyone in the event. There is one league that encompasses all participants along with the regular season and the post season.
Regular Season: The main cluster of matches where teams play every week.
Post Season: Any matches played after the regular season ends.
Division: Any grouping of teams during the regular season. A division might encompass 8 teams who play every other team within the division once over a 7 week regular season.
Playoff: An end of season tournament that ends with a champion.

During the regular season, matches would be best of 1. This is basically mandatory, since we want everyone to play every week in a timely manner.
During the post season, following what I think Thomas is trying to say, we would have multiple playoffs.
Using the 18 team example, we could hold a Gold level playoffs and a Silver level playoffs. The top 9 teams are entered into the gold level playoffs, and the bottom 9 teams are entered into the Silver level playoffs.
The playoffs are separate with no interaction. The regular season is a seeding format to create 2 final tournaments that feature teams at similar play levels.
Every team reaches (can reach? some sort of wild card system?) the post season and enters into one of the playoffs. Naturally, you want to make it into the gold level, where the glory and challenge is. But for less experienced teams, being in the silver level gives them an opportunity to try to become champion among teams similar in skill to themselves. For added fun, maybe have the silver champion get a shot at the gold champion, or the gold runner-up. I think this idea is flat out brilliant. I am flabbergasted. ^.^

The question of how many rounds to fight each match in the playoffs remains though. Best of one would make it supremely interesting to watch. I guess the question is: are we trying to end up with a champion who is the best team in the league, or are we trying to find a champion who happened to be the best team that day?
There are plenty of super bowl winners who are not the best team in the league. Just consider how the Giants beat the Patriots after the Patriots had an undefeated season. Play best of 3 and I bet the Patriots win out.
Letting go of the football comparisons, I think best of one is not a bad way to go in the playoffs. But the higher seeded team ~has~ to have some input on the map. Whether they get to choose one map they don't want to play, or they choose which spawn, etc. In best of one, the map is a huge factor, and the higher seed earned the right to have an advantage.

[redria]

Also, Fantasy GoIO would be amazing. Hilarious but amazing. The best information comes from the score reports the game gives each player after the match. I wonder if there would be a way to get those somehow.

[redria]

Triple posting (like a BOSS)

if it was an art competition, something along the lines of RSI's TNGS would be amazing to watch, and would give a lot of insight into how the ships are designed and made, maybe even opening up more possibilities for gameplay. Muse is looking for a new artist right now, they might be receptive.

The stuff made by fans on TNGS (certainly the weapons) is often actually better than what cloud imperium themselves have done (so far), so I think if we could replicate this WITH AIRSHIPS it would be really cool.

Speaking of which, what happened to lordfunpants? haven't heard from him in a while.

I just looked up the competition and it seems pretty awesome.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/contest/the-next-great-starship
Each contestant designs a ship? Muse releases the hard-points of interaction and asks for the artistic design? It would be interesting to see a competition like this with winning content going towards adventure mode. And if Muse fell in love with someone during the process, not necessarily the winner even, there is that artist opening...