This is a consultation thread for 'clubs' with some (rather rough, but mostly functional) live code behind it to make things more interesting. (Example Club 1)
The 'clubs' concept can go forward in any direction, adopted wholeheartedly, or be erased completely if it proves to have no merit. So please don't be too upset if this all gets canned in the future.
Why clubs, what purpose do they have?
This has come out of a couple of things. When the first accusations of cheating started being voiced years ago, with people taking opposing views on different players, I had considered different ways to satisfy everyone. Also, after thinking about why people would even cheat in the first place, I thought the site probably would benefit from devaluing the site rating system somehow. (Surely, the only reason anyone would consider cheating, right? For some kind of personal glory?)
The one idea that evolved was the idea of individually ranked communities, managed by those within, with their own rating system running alongside the main site ratings. Hopefully, without fragmenting the general community at the same time.
Many could exist in parallel, available to all players on the site (subs and non-subs), and the membership managed by 1 or many administrators in each.
So, with all the recent turmoil with the game mods (we are still very much anti-cheating BTW) I thought I would produce the bare bones version of above and see what happens.
This is obviously not for everyone, many players on this site do just play a friend or family member, and their rating is of little consequence anyway. But, I thought this would be an interesting experiment that might take the site in a new direction.
So, the obvious questions :
Q : Isn't this just like a super-sized clan?
A : No, clans compete against each other, that is not the purpose of a club.
Q: How does this rating stuff work again?
A : Rather than isolate people in a club from the rest of the site, games are created in the normal way. The site will detect when two club members play each other (it could be ANY rated game on the site, a clan game, a tournament game, siege game, a challenge game, or whatever comes along in the future) and then adjust the club rating for those games in addition to the main site rating.
Q: Isn't this all a bit of a waste of time?
A: Possibly, time will tell. It is really is just an experiment that I hope will prove useful.
Anyway, feel free to comment, and don’t hold back. I don't think even Chris is sold on this, so no need to be polite...
-Russ
