SpielByWeb

[Kanga]

Regarding new players in future seasons, I was anticipating starting them at an appropriate level, rather than working up from the bottom. Same goes for players who leave one season but return later.

I want to avoid, as much as possible, really lopsided groups.

Currently this is just a 2 player league, because that was the simplest format to use and develop a fair draw where everyone plays eachother once. The 3, 4 and 5 player tournaments already use a system whereby everyone plays eachother once. Creating a format that encompasses 2,3, 4 and / or 5 player games in the same playing group is an interesting idea; something that we might run with in a separate / future league.

The 'home' player concept is appealing as I generally dislike having to choose maps all the time. However some maps are pretty awful, or not suited to 2 player games, which might be a problem if everyone chooses their own. Or, perhaps it's not a problem, depending on how you look at it.

Please, keep the feedback coming!

[Kanga]

I think I will go with 4 leagues of 10 players each.

I have used the past performances in my tournaments as the main method of ranking players. There were 3 or 4 players who haven't completed any tournaments yet, so I had a quick look at their records, who they had beaten and lost to and made a guess.

The tournament ranking raw numbers I used didn't take into account the 2 player tournament results, so I tweaked 2 or 3 players up or down a division based on good / bad 2 player results.

Here are my proposed leagues:

League A

ahauwi1
almondralf
cpsof95
Early_10
gische
Kanga
koinski
Rebelslayer
t_o_m9
TMJJS


League B
Djura
GamesOnTheBrain
goforit
IBX
lindalait
marcx
smlait
spearjr
still
thiery'en'sarjant

League C
Dobinator
LuvHightide
nmichalek
rorshaq
SiddGames
stargate
SunLion
tlc
tphon
worcesterarlo

League D
Adriaan Pieters
kxw
NoMoreCheese
Payton3434
praisechick
tammykins
Wildfire2099
wildscrpio
Wolfpack
Zaui

[GamesOnTheBrain]

Sounds great to me!

[Early_10]

How does group 1 end up with both you and Rebelslayer? We're doomed!!

[Kanga]

Group 1 is always going to be tough, but you earned your place there as the 4th best performed player in the 2 player tournaments.

I'd watch out for koinski, almondralf and cps too.

[Kanga]

The last issue is how to choose the maps.

By default I was going to continue doing it the same as in the 2 player tournaments. I would pick the maps in advance to be played. I'll post the list of maps I usually choose from below.

Each match would be 3 games on that map.

Alternatives:
1. "home" player chooses map - same for all 3 games.

2. "home" player chooses map for 2 of 3 games, and different maps are used for each variant

Any preferences?

I choose maps that have at least 9 markets, dont always turn into a early land buyout race, and dont have a really strong first player advantage.

Here are some of the map numbers i've used:

65
112
116
117
145
179
181
182
187
211
231
291
325
331

There must be more, this is just what I considered for the current 2p tournament.

[Dobinator]

It might be fun to have an occasional "open" round, where people could pick some of the wilder maps not on your list. If you're good at the game, you should be able to handle some of the different kinds of play emphasized by the odd ones.

What about having a set ruled out rather than ruled in? Obviously, some maps are unplayable, too big for two, biased towards the starting player, or just uninteresting, so they could be banned. Everybody in the league gets two vetoes? I don't know. Just an alternate proposal that might get us some more variety in the games.

Of course, this could be motivated by the fact that I win far more often on weird or rarely-played maps than with the set you've got listed...

[IBX]

You know that Feature Request I made recently might help with map evaluation

[Wildfire2099]

4 groups of ten sounds good... I'd say picking a map for each 'round' would be best... rather than the players picking.. more fair that way.

Looking forward to this starting up!

[Early_10]

[t_o_m9]

[SiddGames]

I agree with the "same map for everyone for the round" suggestion.

[Wildfire2099]

So that leaves a couple logistical things up (unless I missed their discussion)

1) How games are counted... I could see doing it either with each game counting separate (that is, winning 2 of the 3 games would give you a record of 2-1, while winning all 3 would make you 3-0).. or considering each three games 1 match (that is, 1 win regardless of the margin) I'd favor the 1st one myself. There's no real need to keep track of anything else, I'd think, since any tiebreaker could be who won head-to-head. .. those points could be kept, just in case (or differential, as many prefer)

2) How people go from one division to another between 'cycles' ... either its automatic (top two from the lower replace the bottom two from the one above, for example) or there's a 'playoff' between them (sorta like English football)

[tphon]

While the playoff's add excitement to the football league, I think it would slow down this league considerable with 2 divisions having to wait the outcome of all the playoff games.

[Dobinator]

If you're playing round-robin, why do you have to play three games against the same person on the same map each week? Couldn't you play three games against different people on different maps each week on a schedule? That wouldn't be too hard to set up, and it would be more exciting than facing three moves on the same map with the same opponent in a row.