If you look at how far along Divison A is in comparison to all of C-E, it's possible two stages can finish at the same time as A.

and... who is demoting then? the losers of the 1st or the 2nd Div A and B stage?

but What is wrong with ^^^^

Edited 9/5/2016 16:55:32

@indibob

Seems the main criticism of the current setup is the possibility of uneven divisions due to new clans entering at the bottom.

Having seen your own example of how the groups may be seeded though it looks extemely uncompetitive throughout.
The great enjoyment of playing in a division set-up is that as much as possible each clan will be competitive. It seems that this is not a priority now?

From the examples given, some teams would be expected to finish on 0 points!!
Where is the incentive for clans like RP to even enter if they are likely to be in the same division as clans like Outlaws & King Kong?

It's basically taking the competitiveness out of the league from what i see

I think Division D was a bit unaffected by the problem we've been talking about. Look at Group E. There is a clear divide between the skill levels and 3 clans get beat up, while the other 3 have it all easy. Next season those clans will be in Group D, and if you go by current opinion they're expected to tear up Group D as well(not saying I agree with that assessment). Another example is Group C, where most folks agree, LEA has no business being there. So in short, group C and E wasn't competitive(C due to legacy clans and E due to new blood).

There is definitely a need for change and it has been a long time coming. I do acknowledge your point that clans of a similar skill level wont be playing each other in stage 1 though. We expect Stage 2 to be super competitive. There was talk of considering another group(s) for clans who didn't make it to stage 2(this group structure would have clans on a similar level playing each other.. all 3rd placed clans in one group etc). We're going to think about this again.

Was it not feasible just to have the panel reach an agreement on the expected strngth of the new clans and slot them into the relevant division even if that meant having an extra team in that division for a season?

No it is just not feasible to do this. You're not looking at it from our angle here. This is purely based on subjective opinion. We do not have enough information on every player in these clans to be able to make that decision. Clans will always feel hard done by an arbitrary process. What we've proposed here is a bit more concrete and something people know beforehand.

Edited 9/5/2016 17:54:13

@(ง︡'-'︠)ง let's fight!!

Btw it is really frustrating to me that the seeds not at all are giving any advantage although we will be 1st or 2nd.

What about those superpromotions ^. Wouldnt they give you the possibilty to geht up faster? If you are too good at school you can skip classes, too.

Seeds do have some sort of an advantage once this system stabilizes. Even in CL9, you get to avoid some of the "top" clans by being seeded. I don't think it is right to super-promote a clan when they haven't been pitted in some way against those who are missing out(like a D clan super-promoting to B when they haven't faced the C clans in any way).

You know why each Season there are more clans joining? and we need more and more divisions? - Because it is great already

How many people have you spoken to, before reaching this conclusion? We've spoken to about 50+ people across different clans and they seem to think the league doesn't scale anymore. There is also zero motivation for a top clan (which had to drop out for one season) to come back to the league, as it will take them 5 years to get back to their true position in the current format.

Your new proposal @ 9/5/2016 08:24:33

How do you determine the clans in 1C and 2C? Placing of new clans is still a problem. We had exactly the same setup in CL7, and there was a lot of discontent over the comparison across divisions(1C and 2C) in case of a new slot opening up due to a dropout higher above. How do you plan to solve this problem?

How are 1B and 2B determined? What if 2B is weak to begin with? Does that mean that is easy to get into A from 2B for a long time and all the clans in 1B have to accept that? I feel like we've already been down this road before.

Stage 2 is close to what you're aiming for. Is your main concern Stage 1 and mismatch of skill levels? And if so, does my response to indibob address that concern?

Edited 9/5/2016 17:54:40

As much as I think this whole new format is a good idea, I think its necessary to point out that this structure is kind of a band-aid over someone else's problem. Because of limitations in how Warlight is structured, vacations significantly delay the league and its Division A that is culprit, and as far as I know, you can't limit vacations. Its either you accept all vacations or you accept no vacations. Sure Division A plays slower then everyone, but Division A probably takes the same amount of vacations then the other divisions. So the argument of "it takes 3+ years to promote from bottom to top" makes sense, the underlying reason for this is the fact that Division A delays the season and to fix that fact it has been decided to change the format for the lower divisions.

Even without Group A, the league takes a good 5-6 months(look at groups B,C,D in CL7). It would still take 2.5 years to promote to A. I'm not sure I agree with your assessment that it is a band-aid to the vacation problem.

We acknowledge that vacations are a big problem though. We're still discussing solutions, and will hopefully have something in place before CL9.

I don't think it is right to super-promote a clan when they haven't been pitted in some way against those who are missing out(like a D clan super-promoting to B when they haven't faced the C clans in any way).

My idea solves that with the playoff.


P.S: I still think the "3 games max by player" it's against top clans in the qualifiers.

Edited 9/5/2016 18:45:16

@Master of the Dead
I have probably missed something, but has it been considered to make the boot time 2d and then add a small initial banked boot time? It will make the league proceed much faster apart from the vacations. And if the clot gives you more own control, you can maybe limit the vacations by a certain amount. If you consider warlight vacations, someone can have 50 days of vacation during the league. If you put some code in the clot that is like if(total_vacation_duration > 20) then autoloss endif, then you have an artificial way of limiting vacations without having to be limited by warlight. I think that something like 20 days, or maybe even a bit less is perfectly reasonable.

Seeds do have some sort of an advantage once this system stabilizes.

I admit I doesnt got it how it really runs after CL9

Even in CL9, you get to avoid some of the "top" clans by being seeded.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The 2nd look is important sometimes ... The seeds are the "best" clans which would not compete in Div B or higher next season. Sry, the distribution 6th and 7th of B, 3rd and 4th and 5th of C, and so on seemed to be random picked. Now I got it.

...

Well, you know what? As long as these replacements are solved ... let's try this.

PS:

How do you determine the clans in 1C and 2C? Placing of new clans is still a problem. We had exactly the same setup in CL7, and there was a lot of discontent over the comparison across divisions(1C and 2C) in case of a new slot opening up due to a dropout higher above. How do you plan to solve this problem?

How are 1B and 2B determined? What if 2B is weak to begin with? Does that mean that is easy to get into A from 2B for a long time and all the clans in 1B have to accept that? I feel like we've already been down this road before.

Stage 2 is close to what you're aiming for. Is your main concern Stage 1 and mismatch of skill levels? And if so, does my response to indibob address that concern?

Though I think my proposal would be good, too :). If you fix tiebreaker rules or playoffs in such situations before the Season starts. The clans of parallel Divisions would be mixed each Season after a simple pattern which is bringing them on the same level.

@Memele - Sorry I missed your suggestion above

Maybe changing the promotions systems with a play-off or something. For example, with groups of 7 clans:
Div A 1-4 remain in A, DivA 5-6 go to A-play-off, divA 7 go to divB.
DivB1 go to A, divB2 and DivC1 go to divA play off with divA5 and DivA6. (the top 2 go to A and the other two to B).
DivB3-4 remain the same, divB5-6 go to B-play-off and DivB7 go to C.
DivC1 to A-play-off, divC2 to B-play-off, divC3-4 remains, divC5-6 C-play-off, divC7 go to D.
Etc

Play off summary:
A: A5, A6, B2, C1
B: B5, B6, C2, D1
C: C5, C6, D2, E1
etc

This way, if there is a very strong clan at lower levels they could go up 2 divisions at a time (there is not even a need to win the play off, there are 2 slots), or 1 at least. In the other hand, some clans could remain in their division if they were in a very competitive group, they only need to avoid last spot (and manage on the play-off).

This sounds like a decent alternative as well. However, my main concern would be time to completion. Based on past seasons, Groups A and B take a bit longer than the lower groups.

One of our goals is to ensure all these groups finish around the same time.In the format we have proposed, the wait time is worst(Stage 1) + Stage 2 vs worst(Group A/B). In your proposal, the wait time would be worst(Group A,B) + playoff(A,B). I think this significantly delays the season.

The time to move through divisions is basically cut in half in your format. However, the problem still exists if we have a really high number of clans in the future.

In addition to a play-off system, the number of tournaments could decrease a bit (or groups of 6 better) to make the seasons a bit shorter (maybe the same if we add the play-off time).

Not sure if 6 clans per group would reduce the time taken significantly in the top groups. There is also the downside to this where it takes longer to progress up the divisions as there are more groups to navigate.

P.S: I still think the "3 games max by player" it's against top clans in the qualifiers.

Yes. Completely agree. We talked about it on the live stream as well. We've decided to impose a 2 tourney limit for clans in stage 1(total limit per player is 3 tourney). This should balance it out a bit.

@(ง︡'-'︠)ง let's fight!!

Seems like you're more open to the proposed format than previously.

Though I think my proposal would be good, too :). If you fix tiebreaker rules or playoffs in such situations before the Season starts. The clans of parallel Divisions would be mixed each Season after a simple pattern which is bringing them on the same level.

We've tried something like this(without the tiebreaker rules) in CL7, and it didn't work well. So we're going to try something different and hopefully it works out :)

@ARandomPlayer

has it been considered to make the boot time 2d and then add a small initial banked boot time?

The problem with this is that 3 day boot is quite ingrained as the standard in Warlight and having a shorter boot time would most likely result in a large number of inadvertent boots.

If you put some code in the clot that is like if(total_vacation_duration > 20) then autoloss endif, then you have an artificial way of limiting vacations without having to be limited by warlight. I think that something like 20 days, or maybe even a bit less is perfectly reasonable.

We are investigating something similar to this among other alternate ideas. Once we have decided on what we are doing regarding vacations we will let you all know.