Concept for a sunday league

[Wundsalz]

I plan to resurrect the idea of a planetary gearing league I've had a while back to fill the Sunday slot, which is currently not used by GoIs competitive scene.

I've designed this League with the Sunday evening slot and a casual spirit in mind. In my opinion one of the major flaws of the Sunday Rumble was its duration which has been especially problematic for European clans like ours, as Sunday rumbles could very well last until midnight and beyond, which kind of sucks if you need to get up early on Monday. Also I personally consider it quite exhausting to play more than two BO3-encounters in a row which has not been unlikely in Sunday Rumbles.

So I thought about how to organize a GoI-Sunday evening which doesn't require too much time-dedication by the players. The result is a concept which allows all participants to have a guaranteed single scrim within a league. Due to the parallel execution of two encounters in series, it's likely that full clan crews will be around before and/or after your league encounter. This provides a good environment to get either additional scrims (outside the league) started or to play semi-public high level lobbies if you want to. Alternatively you could just call it a day.

Overall the league is designed in a more casual spirit than the previously executed cog-series or the planned and cancelled 3rd series. It allows easy drop ins and outs for teams who just want to enjoy a scrim on a sunday afternoon while providing a system which rewards commitment and on-going success for those who want to take the league more seriously and participate in it on a regular basis.

Cogs in a nutshell

The goal of the league is to match participating teams with other teams of similar strength on a weekly basis. Furthermore the league shall be easily accessible for new teams at any given point of time and it shall encourage teams to participate in the leagues events on a regular basis. Players shall not have dedicate more than 2 hours of their spare time to participate in a league-event.

All teams participating in the League are associated with a slot in the planetary gearing which are indicated by a Letter and a Number in the picture below. In Cog-Events teams which are associated with adjected gear-sections (e.g. C1 and B2) are matched for best-of-three-encounters. If the challenger of an encounter wins, the encounters teams positions in the cogs standings are swapped. Otherwise the positions are kept. At the end of an Cog-Event the gears are turned and points are granted to All teams according to their standings (see the table below). The team which accumulates most points during a season, which lasts 12 events, wins the season.

Organization
The Cog-Events take place each sunday (afternoon for the US, evening for the EU). Which teams which face each other at which time and on what maps will be announced one day prior to each event.
The event organization requires at least 4 voluntary referees per event who watch the matches. Referees can be changed from event to event. potential referees and (hopefully) streamers can sign up to watch encounters and are assigned to encounters one day prior to an event.

Rules

Rules!

An ongoing League
The League is designed as an ongoing event rather than Tournament with a defined start and end date.
While I could possibly see this league format being executed with a start and end date like the Sky-League, Aerodrome or soon the Hephaestus-League, I don't think it fits the concept. This would be problematic due to 2 major flaws my league-concept has that other leagues don't have. The initial seeding has a severe impact on the outcome of the League and the League-outcome can be decided before the end of the League. If this league was executed in a similar way as previous ones an execution of a fair and probably rather time-consuming qualification-phase would be mandatory. After the qualification phase ended, a team with a low seed wouldn't have much more than a theoretical chance to win the season or even just be among the top 3 teams at the end of the season.
Hence I'd much rather like to see this Concept being executed as an ongoing league with relatively brief seasons (6-8 weeks) which connect seamlessly. Feel like playing competitive out of the sudden? - Join mid season! - you probably won't win it anymore, but you can work yourself into a good starting position for the next one.

[Wundsalz]

Feedback is welcome.

Stuff that could currently need help with:
1. think of a cool name for the league. I'd somewhat like to have this league distinguished from the previous cog seasons, as the nature of this league is quite a bit different.
2. think of a lore! planetary gearings, steampunkish-post-apocalyptic theme. I'm sure someone more creative than me can come up with a pseudo-scientific/mystical story why people would fight each other over a bunch of gears. This also might yield a more unique and fitting name for the league.
3. As you can see my artistic skills are rather limited. If someone is interested in actually designing a cool, steampunkish planetary gearing for the league, pm me please!

[redria]

1. This is cool. I liked this design when it was initially brought up, and I still think it is cool.
2. (having a) Rule set is good. I'm glad other people like that concept and are toying with it. (I haven't read the rules yet)

That aside.

Can GoIO handle 2 long running events at once?

Hephaestus Challenge is happening starting May 24th. Unless nobody signs up when we open signups, it is going to be a thing.

You propose for this to run Sunday. That would mean we couldn't have any relaxed or low commitment events running on Sunday. The weekend would be committed entirely to high level competitive play, which is hard enough when each team only competes one day.

My point being, I don't think we have enough strength to hold up 2 events like this at once.

BUT

I developed the HC with the community during the Sky League. We hit on several points that were important, such as needing defined rules, needing a separation of casters and organization, and needing refs. I like that the Cogs concept you've drawn up pulls these along for further use.

I would (personally) tend towards putting this in public development for the duration of the HC and getting Muse backing to make it the next "season" of the official scene after the HC. The HC hopefully has replayability, but it might be nice to not just run the same League over and over. Alternating between systems would be cool, and still leave Sundays reserved for other events that don't have that time commitment.

These are just my opinions. I think its a good starting point and I'd like to see it in play. I just think we aren't big enough to do 2 large events at once.

[-Mad Maverick-]

I agree with redria's sentiments.   I really liked the Sunday rumble format for Sundays; a one off tourney that was a bit more casual and reserve the more hardcore tourneys for Saturdays

[Velvet]

which is currently not used by GoIs competitive scene.

note that that's no longer true. spot claimed.

That said, I'm not of the opinion that organisers should try to muscle each other out and claim monopolies on either of the 2 decent timeslots.

started writing the next bit before Redria's post. so it might feel a little repetitive.

However, the Hephaestus league is already the "big" event for the time being. Even though you're proposing to run it on a different day, I'm not at all sure that anyone wants to participate in 2 long running events at once. So you're inevitably in competition with the Hephaestus and it's already gathered a lot of momentum - the community can't really support 2 big competitive leagues at once imo.
Better to focus on, as Redria says, preparing this as a concept for the next season. A variety of big competitive events and event organisers is a good thing in my opinion, but I think in the community's current state the tournaments have to be run one after another rather than parallel.

[-Mad Maverick-]

I agree with velvet and am excited to compete in velvet's tourney

[Sammy B. T.]

Wundsalz, I believe you know my love of this system. I think I am the only one to make fan art for it.






That being said, I don't think we can do this and the HC at the same time. Community just isn't big enough and teams aren't zealous enough fill both leagues. I would though completely support having a planetary cogs tournament for the next main competitive event. Like super mc duper support because I love planetary cogs.

[-Mad Maverick-]

trying.. to ... stop... but... can't.. I agree with Sammy... ::barf::

[Tropo]

PLEASE NO FUCKING COGS
make it simple

[Sammy B. T.]

You win, you move up. You lose, you don't.



AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAh

[Captain Smollett]

PLEASE NO FUCKING COGS
make it simple

The planetary cog system was actually quite brilliant and a far superior model than the initial cogs.  As a non competitive and barely active player, my opinion doesn't count for all that much anymore however I always wanted to see it happen and it would be pretty darn interesting to me to see it happen after the Hephaestus challenge.

[Frogger]

Stuff that could currently need help with:
1. think of a cool name for the league. I'd somewhat like to have this league distinguished from the previous cog seasons, as the nature of this league is quite a bit different.
2. think of a lore! planetary gearings, steampunkish-post-apocalyptic theme. I'm sure someone more creative than me can come up with a pseudo-scientific/mystical story why people would fight each other over a bunch of gears. This also might yield a more unique and fitting name for the league.
3. As you can see my artistic skills are rather limited. If someone is interested in actually designing a cool, steampunkish planetary gearing for the league, pm me please!

There were plenty of good lore/backstory ideas (mostly contributed by Squash, IIRC) in the Cogs S3 OP here:

https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,2502.0.html

The new organizers of the planetary system could scavenge from this thread as they like. The system is still there - someone just has to implement it.

[Wundsalz]

I've designed this League with the Sunday evening slot and a casual spirit in mind. In my opinion one of the major flaws of the Sunday Rumble was its duration which has been especially problematic for European clans like ours, as Sunday rumbles could very well last until midnight and beyond, which kind of sucks if you need to get up early on Monday. Also I personally consider it quite exhausting to play more than two BO3-enounters in a row which has not been unlikely in Sunday Rumbles.
So I thought about how to organize a GoI-Sunday evening which doesn't require too much time-dedication by the players. The result is a concept which allows all participants to have a guaranteed single scrim within a league. Due to the parallel execution of two encounters in series, it's likely that full clan crews will be around before and/or after your league encounter. This provides a good environment to get either additional scrims (outside the league) started or to play semi-public high level lobbies if you want to. Alternatively you could just call it a day.
Overall the league is designed in a more casual spirit than the previously executed cog-series or the planned and cancelled 3rd series. It allows easy drop ins and outs for teams who just want to enjoy a scrim on a sunday afternoon while providing a system which rewards commitment and on-going success for those who want to take the league more seriously and participate in it on a regular basis.

I could possibly see this league format being executed with a start and end date like the Sky-League, Aerodrome or soon the Hephaestus-League. However this would be problematic due to 2 major flaws my league-concept has that other leagues don't have. The initial seeding has a severe impact on the outcome of the League and the League-outcome can be decided before the end of the League. If this league was executed in a similar way as previous ones an execution of a fair and probably rather time-consuming qualification-phase would be mandatory. After the qualification phase ended, a team with a low seed wouldn't have much more than a theoretical chance to win the season or even just be among the top 3 teams at the end of the season.
Hence I'd much rather like to see this Concept being executed as an ongoing league with relatively brief seasons (6-8 weeks) which connect seamlessly. Feel like playing competitive out of the sudden? - Join mid season! - you probably won't win it anymore, but you can work yourself into a good starting position for the next one.

PLEASE NO FUCKING COGS
make it simple

You will be informed when to play against which team at what time on what map prior to each event. If you don't want to get into the underlying system, you really don't have to.

[Wundsalz]

Can GoIO handle 2 long running events at once?
[...]
You propose for this to run Sunday. That would mean we couldn't have any relaxed or low commitment events running on Sunday. The weekend would be committed entirely to high level competitive play, which is hard enough when each team only competes one day.

I do believe so. The Sunday Rumble ran for more than 20 weeks and always attracted enough teams to get something started.
The league-concept is not designed as a dead-serious tournament. I see it as a more casual, ongoing event that can be entered and exited mid-season by any team.

which is currently not used by GoIs competitive scene.

note that that's no longer true. spot claimed.

That said, I'm not of the opinion that organisers should try to muscle each other out and claim monopolies on either of the 2 decent timeslots.

I think we can debate our potential time-conflict once it's settled whether my league concept is a wanted thing or not. Then it's probably time to debate about time-slot usage.
Tha beeing said, I personally wouldn't mind to pause the league if someone has got a good idea for a sunday-event. Also I could see 1-2 special 2 vs. 2 events per season being integrated into the league to mix things up (Baptized by Spire, 2 vs. 2 on 3 vs. 3 maps - stuff like that).

[-Mad Maverick-]

I still believe that one season based league at a time is the way to go.  velvet's idea/Sunday rumble were both one-off tourneys that one could fully participate in one week take the next off and fully participate in the week after.  this is what appealed to us wolves so much.  wund I think your tourney caters to a dif crowd than velvet's but I think that crowd is telling you to wait till the other season based tourney is over first