PZ international project

I'm not so sure about people not being interested in this.

I think it's because most Master/GM or even lower level players already have their own practice partners, friends of similar skill, clans or local communities where they can get practice.

This project's problem is that it refers to people without access to any of the above, thus a limited target group - obviously Nerchio, LzGamer and the rest of the guys that have shown interest are investing in it as an idea rather than improving their training and benefiting from this right away.

So, what ~~do I~~ you gotta do to ~~make you love me~~ make this work is offer something extra, something most players won't have access to that easily, something that will differentiate the actual "service" and/or improve its quality.

Now, there's 2 great obstacles in doing this:
1. Noone is willing to spend 5 minutes in browsing profiles in order to find the right player (league/race) to practice with.

2. Bnet channels support no moderation.

My suggestions are:

1. You work on mIRC.
I guess the bnet channel could still remain, but honestly it doesn't seem able to support this project at the moment.

2. You need Admins.
Yes, it sounds troublesome, and to be fair it will be. You're just a Masters player who wants to get practice, but nothing ever becomes successful unless it's well organized, and nothing ever becomes well organized unless it's got people working on it. I'm sure people willing to do this will show up if you ask around. I'd be glad to help out at least in the beginning since after August I'll be having my hands full with running a league.

3. How will it work?

3A. You give voice (+v) to all Master & GrandMaster players.
Each M & GM player that comes in the channel will have to PM an admin (@) with his Bnet Username & CharacterCode. The admin checks the profile on sc2ranks.com and gives +v to the player. Theoretically, given most players will be auth'd this will happen only once.

3B. You create a Bot.
You make a Bot that will accept commands from all +v and @. I'm not an expert on the subject but based on the Quake Pick-up channel model, a basic format of it's functions would be:

+ Show Spoiler +

!add <Your Race> <Race you're Looking for>
e.x. !add Protoss Zerg

That will add a Protoss Master/GM player in the list of those looking for Zerg practice partners, and so on.

Therefore, a Zerg player later joins the channel, gets +v and types

!add Zerg Protoss

The Bot finds a match, and messages both players letting them know of who their practice partner is. As i said, I have no knowledge regarding the level of difficulty in making this Bot, but simpler versions would definately serve the same purpose well.

This should be working on a first-come first-served basis, and from that point on the players can exchange ID's, skype, talk about each ones weak spot and get right on with helping each other out.
Obviously they could and should arrange another practice session for the day after or so, but that's the goal, isn't it? Offering quality practice to people that don't have access to it.

However, that alone would omit a basic part of what you're looking for. That is, people observing.
+ Show Spoiler +

So, you add another function to the Bot, available to anyone who joins the channel.

!addobs <Race you're Interested in>
e.x. !addobs Zerg

This way, the very moment the 2 players are notified that they got a match, the first X number of players that were added to the list of people interested in observing a M/GM player practising will get a message as well, letting them know of who that person is.

I say "X number of people" because I doubt a high level player would be interested in spending 20 minutes adding 8 or 10 people to observe his game. It's not time efficient and there's always the lag factor. So you can make it 3 or 5.

3C. You keep the channel moderated and the service clean.
As you can understand, you don't want people who will waste your user's time. Therefore, people who:

- Refuse to do a specific build for their practice partner
- Flame, troll or show any kind of extremely inappropriate behavior
- Abuse any personal information that may be exchanged during practice

and get reported (with actual proof) should be banned from the channel, and their Bnet Account added to a Black-List that all Admins will have access to.

So, let's see what you end up with.

Case-Study #1: Empire.Nerchio looking for Practice:
+ Show Spoiler +

Joins Channel
Types !add Zerg Terran
Finds a M/GM Terran practice partner
Exchanges info
Invites 2-3 players that requested to obs high-level Zerg or Terran - if he's kind enough, that shouldn't be a requirement imo.

Case Study #2: Grimskov is looking for Practice:
+ Show Spoiler +

Joins Channel
Types "hiho! Zerg looking for Plat/Diamond Protoss, msg me!"
Types !addobs Zerg
Gets messaged by an interested player. If he's lucky he gets a nice person. If he's really lucky he gets to observe Empire.Nerchio practice!

Now, on a more abstract fashion let's take a few moments to compare it with "competition":

Why is this better for practice than Ladder is:

It's not random.
It's cheese-proof and generally prevents you from encountering games or strats that seem like a complete waste of time - unless you request for something like that.
It doesn't record stats
It gets you to actually talk to people
It allows observers
It's way faster. You might have to queue up several times to get the match-up and strategy you actually want to practice on.

Why is this better than Practicing with your Clan/Team/Friends:

Well, it isn't, i guess. BUT:
Many skilled players don't have access to such circles.
It offers variety in styles. Two players could do the same build but trying it out against different styles could lead to different conclusions
It offers variety in opinions.
It's there when they're not. You could theoretically get quality practice at any point of the day or night.

Well, I think this would be a good first step to start getting people interested in this.

Feel free to PM me anytime if you need help.

EDIT: I'm a fairly new member on TL, so excuse my noobness: Maybe all the above should just be applied on #tlpickup

PZ international project - Page 4

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