Hey champs! Work in progress, expect glitches, be excellent to each other! ~ @drsii

Player Handbook

Welcome friend! Prepare yourself for new friends & fun times. We've organized a friendly environment for competitive Catan VR gameplay open to all Catan VR players.

Using a monthly season format, we tabulate league matches played by participating members over a regular season period, leading to a playoff semifinal round played between the Top 16 players, culminating with a championship match amongst the final four.

About us

We're avid Catan players, in equal standing and voting power. Our mission is to create a fun and vibrant community of players to facilitate the organization of games. We've chosen a system of governance which we hope fosters participation in league policies by all league members.

Roadmap

We're looking to build a strong and open community. After a long day it's nice to kick back and Catan. Here we outline past and future plans which make this community stronger.

Version Improvements
v0.1 legacy league policies
v0.2 Community driven governance, consensus based policies, democratic stewardship
v0.3 Code of conduct policy
v0.4 Open match scoring to all, frictionless participation, open statistical data
v0.x Seasonal awards & playoff prizes
v0.x Change to ELO / Trueskill rating system

Governance

The league is headed by a delegation of 5 administrators from the community. Each administrator is considered equal in standing and voting power. Admins are responsible for organizing league events, enforcing policies, and maintaining league infrastructure such as website, discord, bots, score tracking, etc.

  1. All actions require a full vote from the admin staff.
  2. A quorum of 3 admins can make temporary judgements in situations that require expedience.
  3. All league members can submit proposals to change league policy.
  4. Admins vote to allow submitted proposals for league consideration.
  5. Proposals will be open for public for comment during regular season play.
  6. Proposals having sufficient public review will be scheduled for voting by admins during playoffs.
  7. Admins violating the code of conduct can be removed by unanimous vote.

Membership

A league member is any player who wishes to participate in league playoff matches which require joining the Catan VR league discord server.

Playing

Anyone can play a league match and is not required to be a league member. :)

Regular Season: 1st - 21st of each month.

Playoff Season: 22nd - end of month.

League matches

A league match is a 3 or 4-player game where at least 2 players are league members. Before a match begins, all players should be made aware that the match will be recorded and league members should encourage non league members to join discord should they wish to be qualified for the playoffs.

At the conclusion of a league match, the match result should be promptly posted by one of the league members in the #league-match-reports discord channel.

Reporting a match

league members post completed league matches on discord, in a dedicated sub-channel for the purpose of tracking scores. We utilize an automated system and discord bot called 'Cato,' to assist with our tabulation process. This system requires a format whereby league match reports must include a few primary components:

  1. The text “#score” (this will activate Cato to facilitate with league match tabulation.)
  2. Correctly tagged discord usernames for league members players (their names turn blue when properly tagged.)
  3. Non league members usernames should be proceeded with an exclamation point
  4. The number of victory points each player achieved, listed right after each participating player followed by a comma.

#score @chugach 7, @sheff 8, !janedoe 10, !jondoe 9

The next required step is a validation step, whereby we ask that at least one participating player (other than the posting player) to “react” by adding an emoji to the match report discord post, to confirm the occurrence of the match and the report’s accuracy to the best of their knowledge. After these two steps are completed, a league admin will later certify the match report for it to be tabulated into our league standings.

Cato is designed to reject 'defective' match reports if certain deficiencies are recognized--such as the bot detects an included player is not correctly tagged. It will reject the post and prompt the submitting player to correct and try re-submitting the match report.

Reporting Match Errors:

Should a participating player observe an error exists within a recent match report, please notify the discord member who posted it, such that they may edit the match report to correct any mistakes believed to have occurred. Note that, if that match report post happened to have been already emoji'd by another participating player from the match, this later edit of the post will wipe all existing validations--such that at least one new validation will then be necessary following the edit for the report to be accepted.

Scoring

Currently league standings are based on a weighted average calculation of the cumulative matches in which our members participated. Currently, we utilize a weighted average formula, which entails 4-Player matches having slightly more 'weight' compared to 3-Player matches.

Win Bonuses

A winning player is awarded a Win Bonus of _5-Points for 4-Player matches and _3-Points for 3-Player matches,* for their victory of that individual match.

Min Match Requirement

To be eligible for the playoffs, players are required to participate in a minimum of 15 League Matches in the Regular Season period. To incentivize further gameplay beyond this primary threshold, active league players who meet a secondary threshold of 30 League Matches will benefit by an adjustment of their final weighted average, whereby their average will be rounded up to the next .25 point.

Playoffs

The Top 16 players at the conclusion of our Regular Season will be seeded into 4 Groups of 4 Players for a Semifinal Round. Each group coordinates to complete their single match within the final week of the season.

Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4
1,8,9,16 2,7,10,15 3,6,11,14 4,5,12,13

Four finalists will then advance from each of these groups to a single, winner-take-all Championship Match.

Matches will be seeded as soon as possible. It may take up to 48 hours in order to work through deferrals and inactive players.

House Rules

Special circumstances, technical difficulties, or unique game mechanics occur from time to time and represent a challenging aspect in fairly administrating league competition. The following house rules help to clarify what to do when you encounter such situations.

Road Building Card

In Catan VR the road building card allows you to build two roads. Currently this card can be canceled either before or after placing one road segment. In return you will be given 1 wood, and 1 brick. Until this mechanic is fixed by the game developers using the road building card in this way is allowed.

Glitches

Though it is difficult to indicate comprehensive guidelines, generally, if a player should glitch out of a match, the match unfortunately must be scrapped for our league purposes.

Given this general procedure regarding glitches has an obvious potential for abuse, if you suspect such abuse is occurring, or notice unsettling consistency by a player, feel free to direct message a league admin on discord about it. We'll do our best to look into the matter, to assess the situation and the players involved.

The Double Ten

In the rare instance it is possible for two players to achieve 10 points. This occurs when a player with 8 points is awarded the road trophy when a player with 9 points breaks another players longest road. Should this occur report the match scores directly to a league admin for manual processing.

Code of Conduct

Because this is a discord community, there are implicit terms and standards for user conduct that you should be aware of and conform to. These can be reviewed at the following link: Discord Guidelines.

When participating in a league match, you are in a safe, respectful, inclusive, and fun environment. This Code of Conduct applies to everyone: admin, staff, league members, and regular players will be held to the same standards. We do not tolerate harassment of any kind, including:

  • Intimidation or threats
  • Inappropriate disruptions
  • Hurtful language
  • Unwanted sexual attention
  • Bullying, stalking or following
  • Revealing identifiable information (doxxing)

Especially in connection to:

  • Race or ethnicity
  • National origin
  • Gender identity or presentation
  • Sex or sexual orientation
  • Age
  • Disability, medical condition or pregnancy
  • Religion
  • Citizenship status

If someone is using language or behaving in a way that makes you uncomfortable, please ask them to stop as far as you’re comfortable doing so.

If you experience or witness any form of harassment, please contact an Admin. If you are asked to stop any harassing behavior as listed above, STOP immediately.

Any future infraction will lead to a ban on discord and a referral to Experiment7 developers to decide if a ban from Catan VR is warranted.