Community > Community Events
Room for Improvement
Imagine:
--- Quote from: Queso on July 29, 2014, 10:04:40 am ---I'd agree there. It does kind of push out other events given it's length.
--- End quote ---
Gonna be devil's advocate here and say that's what people wanted. Everyone called for a league not just a tournament, and having that take up ~2 months is about as minimal as you could get it with the amount of teams that participated.
Thomas:
Personally I kind of like the longer season, it gives a nice spread for win/loss records. Shortening the season gives a lot more ties, less head to head, and a higher chance of teams having similar k/d. Just makes it difficult in general to seed the tournament.
Some options might be splitting the Hephaestus over a couple of days, such as Friday and Saturday matches. Same number of matches and stuff, but half the teams play on Friday, and half on Saturday; leaving more room for other events on Saturday.
Then the problem with that is it'll be harder to find a good time on Friday for teams to play. Since players in America have work/school more often on Fridays. Moving the time to later in the evening is often far too late for EU players, despite being a weekend.
Velvet:
maybe a 2 week break at the midpoint, then?
redria:
The real question comes down to what the community wants from this. The goal, if need be, is for this to be treated as the high level competitive event, as Cogs and Sky League were treated. The event you look to compete in to be crowned the best competitive team in the game. With this in mind, there are 2 distinct features where we made choices that pushed us towards where we are.
Tournament, league, or other? We chose league. This allows teams to continue to play over the length of the event. However, it keeps daily events long throughout, and it increases the length as teams play more matches. Tournament offers faster resolution, but teams eliminated early have nothing to do while it plays out. Other options are possible through creativity possibly. Ideas are welcome.
Size: exclusive or inclusive? We chose to be inclusive. Anyone can participate. This allows dark horse contenders and fresh teams the opportunity to make headway. It also makes the event much larger. With more teams, there needs to be more matches to help really determine where teams fall. Exclusive play would allow for a limited team pool of the best teams, allowing for shorter seasons and higher level play all around, but at the cost of teams that don't do as well.
No matter what else you look at, it really boils down to these 2 factors.
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For example, keeping league play and switching over to exclusive play. The League features 4 top level teams. These teams all play each other once in a best of 3 over the course of 3 weeks. The top 2 teams play each other in a final best of 3 during the 4th week, determining the season winner. After a week off, the next season starts. The top 2 teams from the previous season stay, and the bottom 2 teams are knocked out. They are replaced by the top 2 teams in whatever event was running for everyone else during the previous season.
Using this all but the top 4 teams can participate in whatever event the community puts together on Saturdays. The best 2 teams coming out of this are offered a place in the next season. Take it like the soccer system, where you can move up by playing well and move down by playing poorly. The premier event features only those teams that are hot at the moment, or that can perform exceptionally consistently.
Now your low tier events can be whatever fits inside a 4-5 week window, and if it is shorter than that it gives teams a break.
This helps solve a lot of problems in a lot of areas, but it breaks one of the decisions we made to be inclusive. It is a route we could move to, but it would naturally move away from some of the better rewards these events have had. It would also beg for something like a yearly Sky League tournament to be held.
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Looking at something falling in the "other" category, let's keep the length of the league and make it more accessible to teams. This wouldn't help other events, but it would help individual teams and new teams.
Take the regular season and break it up into 3 separate and distinct periods. These periods last 3 weeks and run in succession. You may sign up for a period up until 1 week before it starts, so a team could join in at the end of the regular season. Teams are broken into divisions of 6 teams each, and you play 5 games over the course of the 3 week period. The top team from each division is advanced into the winner's bracket. All other teams are free to sign back up for the next period or to take a break. At the end of the 3 periods, all teams in the winner's bracket move into a 2-3 week playoffs. While periods are going on, any team in the winner's bracket can request a match to earn a higher seeding in the playoffs. These matches will be custom made between teams that sign up from the winner's bracket, meaning the admins could even make it a CP map, or take 3 teams and create a 3v3 match. This allows winner's bracket teams the opportunity to play and advance while having a sure spot in the playoffs.
This format frees teams from the long commitment and the small window of opportunity to sign up. It keeps winning teams entertained after they secure their spot and provides an opportunity for unique matches not usually seen in competitive. And it still gives a feeling of there being a season event with a dramatic playoff. But it really breaks apart the league concept and turns it into something... else.
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Overall, there are creative solutions, but you have to make concessions to try to balance between a perfect theoretical idea and making something that is enjoyable. Feel free to give ideas on ways to move around problems, or feedback on the couple ideas posted. Those are my personal ideas for a direction we could move, but the first is radical and the second didn't get the most favorable feedback from fellow admins. ;D But that's okay. I'm farming for ideas to see what people enjoy/hate. And somehow I think exclusive play would not go over well. ;)
Alistair MacBain:
Same as always ... Just my thoughts aswell no official statement.
I can totally sign the last sentences from redria.
I would love to improve the issues we had and the problematic facts. But i dont want to turn this to one of the thousands of one-off tourneys we already had.
Yes they are good and allow a big potion of teams to competet whenever they want. But then we lack that major event that puts everything together and allows only the best teams to come out on top. Thats what we lacked during the Sunday Rumble and Saturday Box Social period. We had tournaments going all weekend but all of them were one timers. You played one and that was it. There was no big event that crowned the king.
Thats what i thought Hepheastus should be. And you cant have this when you dont drag it out. A simple elimination tournament will never be able to crown the best teams. No matter if its played on one or several weeks. Thats what a league is good for. It judges much better who is good. That doesnt that certain factors dont influence it but the influence of say one player missing isnt that big.
Ill take the Mad Hatters as an example. They had to forfeit one match and still came out on third place of their division. One unfortunate factor (missing player, lag, mood, day performance) doesnt influence your whole score to hard. It will always have an influence but the influence gets smaller the more matches you have in a league.
And adding a two week break instead of just a one week break introduces the problem of longterm commitment much more.
We will see what we can grab for season 2.
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