Changing to Bo3

[Tanya Phenole]

 As I know, to be integrated into MLG, we need to change regular league to "best of 3" system, instead of current "best of one". Here I'd love to present my idea of how it could look like.

First of all, best of three matches will consume significantly larger amount of time, but the timezone overlap is quite narrow. If we want to keep the event's lengh with approximately same amount of teams participating, we have to split up to regional timezones.
On this picture I compare current system and possible Bo3 system, when we move from 2 random divisions, playing and streamed at the same time, to geographically-organised divisions streamed one after another, overlaping in "cross-zone"  period, when cross-divisional matches can be hosted. Every "best of 3" set is given a limit of 1,5 hours.


However, this system leads to several problems.

• will significantly split up players from different timezones. Most european players won't be able to watch later american streams, and on the earliest matches streaming chat will be almost dead.
• it loads up the administration with additional time. These people spend time on organising events for us, and we can't demand them to work a full 8-hours day on their weekend for our leisure.
• no post-show talk, which gave the tourney streams a festive touch. I am dead serious here, I am convinced that this has become important part of the league, and we can't just throw it off
• Every 2 new teams will add a week to the event's duration.

Another idea is to split the games into Saturday and Sunday.

Benefits:

• More flexibility to teams number
• More tolerant to timezones
• Less time in a day consumed by organisers
• Room for Australian/Asian players, who could join european division if they want late night time, or American, if they'd prefer earliest morning

Flaws

• NO SUNDAY EVENT (greatest disadvantage)
• Administration and streamers waste 2 weekends instead of one on this
• Poor European people who need to wake up early for work/scool/etc

The team should define their regional preference during sign-up. If there would be uneven amount of european and american team, a team would be offered to volunteer to take other region's division and given a priority in later/earlier times when scheduled.

[Alistair MacBain]

At start the usual disclaimer ...
This is only my personal view and nothing we have discussed as administration.

I havent read the whole MLG stuff yet but I dont think we hardly need a bo3 for the league part. Its a common thing. One single match doesnt have the same big impact on the standings in that. One out of 8 matches isnt a big thing. And its not new. League of Legends uses a similiar bo1 scenario for their league. Bo3 is only important for elimination tournaments.
For a League it isnt that important. I actually love the bo1 for the league part. I could maybe think of a 2 game scenarion similiar to what the GSL in starcraft 2 used. But this is just theory.

The big issue of bo3 is as you said the time thing. And while a region split works theoretically it currently would mess up alot. Most of the current teams are cross region. There are barely any teams that are exlusivly european or american. Id rather not force the people to decide and give them the current choice.

[Skrimskraw]

I dont think improving the time needed is a good idea, since most teams already says that the event was running for too long.
+ that is a lot of time required from the streamers to be around and they are unpaid.

[Queso]

Are the MLG Icarus rules still written to say Bo3? I couldn't find it when I gave them a quick re-read.

[Tanya Phenole]

As you can see, the fugures are illustrating that we dont actually need "best of 3" system. I was trying to figure out all arguments against and all ways to avoid that;

However, I still would like to split divisions into Eu and Am, because EU/AM competitive teams ratio is close to 50/50,  or at least take regional properties of team into scheduling. Eu-Eu matches earlier, Eu-Am in middle and Am-Am in the end. Even in this tight 3,5 hours ovelapping period it can significantly influence teams in a good way. I volunteer to work on this scheduling on season 2.

[Wundsalz]

Although one could see some of the matches in the Heph League pushed the scheduled times to a limit for EU-players (one of our matches in the first phase started past midnight local time in germany), I'd prefer to avoid a community split if possible. I like our communities rather unique characteristic of being somewhat united across the big pond.

I wouldn't mind if extreme cases, like an US-West-coast centered clan facing a russian centereted clan, would receive some sort of special treatment to ensure they get one of the rare time slots which fits both parties needs.

[Tanya Phenole]

Wunds, you do realise that west coast has quite few difference with some russian regions ? Russia has 9 offficial timezones.

instead of Anvil and Hammer division, we could have Eu and Am ones. since there were matches inside one division and cross-divisional match , we can schedule them in following order :  Eu matches, double-streamed, Cross-division doublestreamed, Am matches double-streamed. So streamers will still work simultaneously and won't be locked to their division.

On other limit, HC was quite early for American players as well, because mathes starting at 16:00 means people need to get to 14:30 (or 12.30 considering western coast).

I am great fan of scheduled matches, but this only illustrates how much we need more attentive attitude to scheduling.

[Frogger]

bo3 takes forever, please god no