WaterWar.net

What's the point, in your mind, of the WWn League?

This question arose from discussions in this thread.

I'd like to use this thread for the group to both put up their ideas and hopes, then come to a consensus and alignment over what the WWn League is about and what it should strive to do. Basically, the WWn League really needs to good mission statement to rally around and rules and regulations will build upon the underlying goal of the League.

IMO the WWn League would be the perfect catalyst for maintaining a healthy community of about 5 - 10x the current size of Soakerdom.

I envision a group of water warriors, kind of like a militia if you will, something like iSoaker Rogues or H2O Commandos. One which promotes participation in actual water wars, and the reporting of war stories, photos, and movies. At the end of the year people can receive (or pass on) awards received based on not so subjective points accumulated for battle participation and reporting. Additionally, members may nominate other members for particular awards based on battle performance such as # of flags stolen, # of kills made, stealthy/not being eliminated often, or best ambush/elimination, etc. The league would then vote on this. I also like the idea of a photo of the year award like iSoaker did, and also a movie of the year award.

Outside of the points realm, I envision the league having member profiles with the wars they've attended, their accomplishments, their favorite blasters etc. and where they are willing to fight. We could have a league map. Something like all of that, but more developed so that we can have some good organization of waterwarfare. We have a small community, so I don't really see it having a major impact on ppl outside of the community, I have a separate scheme for advertising water warfare, but once people get here I see this being a catalyst for actual wars and battles.

However, if the majority of WWN wants the League to dish out points for all participation, in order to up participation, then I can get behind that too.

I think it has two simple purposes:

1. To promote water warfare and get ordinary people interested in it.

2. To keep our membership active on WWn and active in in fighting, and making discoveries in modding, building, fixing, etc.

So, should the WWn League focus on the water warring or should it any water blaster-related activity including review, modding, building, and fixing? Does this also include points to be awarded for those building water blaster/water warfare-related websites? If it is including things beyond water warfare reporting and stories, is there any activity that should be excluded from getting points? How about WWn wiki contributions?

Just some additional points to ponder.

It should include modding/building/fixing in my opinion. Building a website should definitely count. I don't think editing the wiki should count, unless it's big.

I agree about the wiki, as usually most of it would already be scored, whether it be innovative mods or other things that deserve to be documented.

What about gametypes? I remember last year, that was only for before season stuff, but has that been decided? How far distinguished does a gametype need to be to be scored as brand new?

The more activities that people do that are allowable to be awarded points, the more rules and definitions needed to actually score them.

While I understand members' feelings that all sorts of activities deserve recognition, part of me worries that if we give points to what many members already do regardless of the existence of the League (e.g. writing reviews, building their website, etc.), we are detracting from what we should (?) be focusing on: water warfare.

Things like building blasters, buying and reviewing them, building websites, and coming up with cool, neat scenarios are great and all, but if members aren't actually going out and soaking someone, to me, I think we're failing at what we're ultimately trying to do.

Now, if the majority here feel that all things should be rewarded points since we need the help to increase our base level of general activity, I can understand that, but I would then suggest not calling this the "League" since, to me, "League" implies games being played somewhere, somehow.

Maybe the League should award more points for actual water wars (and their writeups) than for building or modding. I think these are still important parts of water warfare, and its development, but the water warfare itself should have more importance. I mean what's the point in water weapon development if there are no water wars to use said weapons in?

I am probably more biased than M4 when it comes to this. I think the league should be for water wars only. The first iteration was for fighting and if you couldn't hold a physical battle, you could submit fictional ones. This time, there are a bunch of options if you have no one to fight with - fictional reports, site scouting reports, tactical scenarios, war-themed pics/videos etc. I am adverse to opening the floodgates because it could degenerate into points for writing your name and the such. If reviews, mods, homemades, wikis, sites, etc are allowed in, it dilutes the league severely. Points would be going out like every day. If we have to go for everything, I'd suggest changing the name completely, because the term "league" generally denotes physical action and competition. When you're getting points for writing a review or modding a soaker, it's more of a generalized incentive program than a "league".

@Martianshark - your description sounds very similar to what we currently have
@Atvan - your description sounds like what we have, but also with points for new game types
@Andrew - current system rewards more points for battling than anything else already
@Wetmonkey - so you have no comment about a league for the current community?
@DX - I am seriously contemplating making a separate "fight club" like you just described
@isoaker - I think you understand the challenges of an extensive club that gives out rewards for any submission, as well as how this could take the emphasis away from actually having real watergun fights.

We have ~20 frequently active members, we need a lot more than 6 ppl's opinions to come to any conclusion on this subject.


Currently the WWN league is nonfunctioning because too many people have problems with it. If this continues indefinitely I will start my own combat league. It will not be intended to draw attention away from WWN, all discussions and submissions would still take place here. This would also incorporate isoaker's shirt idea if it goes through, as well as physical prizes at the end of the season handed out by me.

Perhaps mods, homemades, and gametypes should by themselves be worth nothing but each time a battle in which the new weapon or gametype was used during the season, one point would be rewarded. Each time another member used them independantly (i.e. wasn't loaned the weapon, or participating in a battle wtih the creator when referring to gametypes), two points would be awarded. This would promote new ideas without using them as an alternative to battles.

That sounds like a good idea, but you should be awarded more than one point for using it. I think you should get around 5 points for modding/building a homemade, plus extra points for every time you use it. The amount of points you get for using it depends on how big the war is.

But you already get extra points for bigger wars, and the whole point is that somr people don't like awarding points for non-combat, and I completely understand them- look at the name of the forum.

At this point, I'm becoming rather apathetic lol. I'd rather see a league I don't have 100% absolute agreement with on its functionality, than nothing at all. That said, I still have to weigh in.

If we say we are focused on combat, we should be that way. If we are ONLY rewarding points for participation in wars, and those points are based on size of the games, then we simply do it that way without regards to, say, fictitious stories or scenarios. If we want to reward for reports as opposed to participation, then we need to consider the fact that walls of text are not the only means to do this and that the overall quality of the submission should be looked at.

There is one potential loophole I would like to point out, and that is that hosting a 4-player game takes more effort and arguably contributes more than merely walking over to a 20-player random water balloon soakfest and tossing a few balloons. However, I suppose defining what we want to reward to the fine details needs to come later after we know what we want to do.

Perhaps we could run a poll on what kind of league members want to vote for?

What people seem to fail to understand about "fair" points distribution is this:

If someone has a problem with the amount of points being distributed to a submission, all they have to do is say so. Then the admins, mods, whoever else will look into it and discuss the issue. I completely feel what you're saying about a random 20 person waterballoon soakfest that you didn't organize - but who on here has even participated in one of those? I was going to attend a big (30-40 ppl?) "smashed soakfest" last year but it just so happened to be on the Saturday of Downpour, which was much more important to me. These things are the exceptions, not the rules.

Quality of submission is taken into account not only by the amount of text, but by grammar, extra points if it was particularly enthralling, points for pictures, points for video, points if it involves a league member out of state, points for # of people. At the end of the day you have to have some kind of hard guidelines, and I think that our current guidelines concerning war submissions is as fair as possible without taking 2 weeks for the entire board to discuss its value.

And if you have a problem with the number of points a report receives... all you have to do is say so.

To be fair about being fair , what the point system seems to lack is awarding points for those who actually help organize a water war as opposed to solely participating in it. That should help make point awarding fairer and hopefully also promote more to try to organize games as well.

To me, it seems like the League exists solely because iSoaker wanted to provide an incentive for more members to upload and document their water warfare activities. We can spend a really long time defining what "water warfare activities" means, but at the end of the day, if the ultimate incentive for most people is a physical prize, I think that the person who is supplying the prize is really the person who has complete control over the system.

Again, I don't think that the community is large enough to warrant this type of organized league. I think if we could have the same effect, but with much less busy-work and rules-writing, by just holding a series of one-off contests. "Best Homemade of 2012", "Best War Story of 2012", etc.

wetmonkey442 wrote:To me, it seems like the League exists solely because iSoaker wanted to provide an incentive for more members to upload and document their water warfare activities. We can spend a really long time defining what "water warfare activities" means, but at the end of the day, if the ultimate incentive for most people is a physical prize, I think that the person who is supplying the prize is really the person who has complete control over the system.

Well, the uploading and documenting water warfare activities was definitely a part of the idea, but the documentation only came into play since we don't have a good system of recording water warfare games played. If we had some official referees who could attend and score every event, there's be no need for Players to report their activities; the referee would tally up points and provide overviews of games, but alas, not yet. Physical prizes were a bonus incentive and while it makes sense for those supplying prizes to have the final say, in a sense, sometimes there are prizes available without really specific guides on how to award them so long as the awarding seems fair. Having final say does not exclude the desire for suggestions.

Ultimately, though, the sense I've gotten from the community over the past several years is that we spend more energy talking about technology than actually battling. If the League can help bring better balance and get more out there soaking others, then I would consider that success.

I would not be opposed to what wetmonkey has recommended with a few simple year end nominations.

With that being said, this is my chief concern:

isoaker wrote:Ultimately, though, the sense I've gotten from the community over the past several years is that we spend more energy talking about technology than actually battling. If the League can help bring better balance and get more out there soaking others, then I would consider that success.