Now that Clan League 9 is well underway, I know many of us are looking ahead to next season. We made quite a few changes to the way the league runs between Season 8 and Season 9. Some of the changes have been more successful than others, but overall we feel that the changes have been positive. That being said, there is still a lot of room for improvement. We'd like initiate a discussion now about what is going well, what is going poorly, and what solutions to some of these problems might look like.

We are also looking for volunteers who would be willing to help with some things that need to be done around clan league, so if you're interested, let us know.

First a few caveats:

• We are not committing to implementing any changes suggested here. This is a venue to discuss the issues, give us an idea of the general sentiment of the community and to ensure we don't miss a real problem
  
• Do not provide solutions without thinking them through. We don't want it to turn into a series of half-baked ideas that will not work in practice. They don't have to be perfect, but they must be workable.
  
• Specifically explain which problems your change alleviates.
  
• This is not the place to talk about changes to the overall format of the competition, since we don't want that overwhelm any other discussion.

With that out of the way, let's detail the biggest problems that we see with the current season of the league.

• Games being decided by non-joins
  
• More player level breakdown of stats needed
  
• Substitutions require manual work to be done by the league organizers
  
• Notification issues: notification requires manual work by organizers and sometimes fails to reach the necessary audience
  
• Alts and multi-clan membership is a growing problem.
  
• Using Google Docs instead of a more robust database limits functionality and complicates improvements
  
• Lack of a clear schedule
  
• Clan league takes too long, and specifically is much slower in some divisions than others
  
• Clan league is stalled by players taking vacations in excess of 40 days

We're going to keep this discussion open for the next 2 weeks, at which time we will look through them and see which seem workable and realistic. We will then initiate another discussion where we will lay out the solutions we're considering, and give the positive and negative consequences of each change.

Edited 6/1/2017 01:10:46

Here's an example of what we expect a solution to look like:

Problem: Games being decided by non-joins

Solution:

• Freeze 1v1 games for a slot which booted (or failed to join). This allows clans to sub their players. This prevents an inactive player from costing a clan 4 games at once.
  
• If player fails to join a game after 3 days, can we replace that player with an AI? The team will have to play 2v3 for the entire game(with an AI) (Currently not possible as far as we can tell with the current API setup.)
  
• If a player fails to join a game, delete the game and mark it with a special tag. It will be reported as a "deleted game" in the weekly report. This same game will be created one more time in 1 week. The clan has a week to substitute the inactive player or at-least chase them down and make sure they join the 2nd "substitute game" created in a week's time.

Edited 6/1/2017 01:10:23

Don't rig it.

Don't let Jefferspin play.

*placeholder*

Using Google Docs instead of a more robust database limits functionality and complicates improvements

Having written a Python library to make "let's treat Google Sheets as a database" a slightly-less-unreasonable suggestion, I would still strongly recommend switching to a real database. Too much unpredictable behavior and latency is going to just destroy your stuff.

Or at the very least, build/use a wrapper that lets you abstract away Google Sheets-specific issues and just work with it as if it were a generalized database.

I am willing to volunteer to help out for CL10.

I would like to help organize CL10. I don't have yet solutions to those problems mentioned above, I did not took time to think too much about them. I will probably post something here when I come up with some solutions.

Edited 6/1/2017 02:47:53

We are also looking for volunteers who would be willing to help with some things that need to be done around clan league, so if you're interested, let us know.

Just to be clear, we're looking for people to help us with tasks like scorekeeping and communication with regards to deadlines, roster submissions, roster entries, spreadsheet handling etc. We're not looking to expand the CL panel as we've had a panel of 5-6 people before and seen how difficult that can get, to be able to respond to issues in a quick fashion.

Clan league takes too long, and specifically is much slower in some divisions than others

This to me is the single biggest issue for Clan League right now. If you compare Divisions A and B (Qualifiers can't be used as a comparison), Division B is nearly done all games, A seems to have passed the halfway point at least. We now have also have the added complexity of the convoluted qualifier to C/D format that might finish at the same time or after A since the divisions are just starting.

In my opinion, there are two parts that are slowing the league: Division A and the Qualifier format. Of the two, Division A is a trickier problem because there isn't a way to actually get people to play faster. Division A players spend more time analyzing games then other divisions, play games slower then other divisions. You can't police that. I have avoided the question of Division A taking more vacations because I would prefer to have someone in Division A testify to that. To the Qualifier format, the solution is to revert to the old format but I get the sense people don't want that. They want a fair, fast format even if those two things are contradictory.

I don't really have anything to suggest here, but to say I see no solution to this except a re-think of the entirety of Clan League. If there was a way to have Division A off on its own it would enable the other divisions to probably host at least 2 seasons per year. Or the concept of a P/R format might need to be replaced with something more adaptable to the complexity of having 30+ clans in a league together.

Problem:: Alts and multi-clan membership is a growing problem.

Solution

• Unless they can get explicitly excempted by the Panel, the account that the player used for the previous season of clan league must also be used for the current season of clan league. (This would force players to change the clan their account is in if they want to play for a different clan.)
  
• Unless the player is only in one clan, the account that the player can use to play in clan league must be their highest leveled account, unless they are explicitly exempted by the council, or are already using a lower-leveled account in clan league from a season from before which this rule was implemented. (since mains usually have a higher level than their alt counterparts, this could help.)
  

I will add more stuff here as I think of it.

Edited 6/1/2017 05:07:13

I am a developer on a data entry project. I do updates to the UI and database. I would help if you had a way to host them. I don't want to have a detailed conversation here, but basically an application that displays the data. Or just an ssrs with reports of the data would be easy to do.

PostgresSQL is free and I know how to use that, you just need a server.

Also, we can't do much about alts unless Fizzer gives us some help there.

Edited 6/1/2017 05:16:40

+1 to Beren
solving boots is huge improvement and most important!

Problem:

• Lack of a clear schedule
  
• Clan league takes too long, and specifically is much slower in some divisions than others
  
• Clan league is stalled by players taking vacations in excess of 40 days
  

Solution:

• Start the games according to a fixed schedule.
  
• Every x days a game will be created without taking into account how much games the players already have.
  

Comment:
Everyone would know, when his games will be allocated and clans are able to plan way better. The game amount of players, which are playing slowly will stack up, while those who are playing faster have less games. With this clear schedule, the panel is able to influence the duration of clan league. For different divisions differnt schedules could be beneficial (Qualifiers vs. division A and B).

Masters on #1, ONE on #2

Sure, let me give you a hand there! How about guaranteed promotion for Blitz in B next season, Beren can win CL10 and Blitz CL11? Would that work out? ;)
Jk, I am willing to help with the mentioned tasks if you dont find enough other people, and you can always ask me for helping out with tasks that have a clear limited time frame, like with checking template settings for errors etc.
I believe spreading CL management workload is a goal thats in our all best interest.

CL duration

Start the games according to a fixed schedule.
Every x days a game will be created without taking into account how much games the players already have.

I was going to suggest the same.
I remember making a half serious suggestion before CL9 to raise 3v3 game count to 5 since they take so long... This is obviously a more practical solution.

Krunx and I are playing in the Preußenliga where there is a fixed schedule for all the games, and so far this has worked very well. Its only 1v1 though.

Vacations
I believe vacations holding up CL are really unneccessary and should mainly be handled via team managers.
If you go on a 20+ day vacation you should be subbed. I dont see the point of fielding someone who will hold up a whole league. This is supposed to be fun.
If vacations are known before they should be managed by team managers, if vacations happen due to unexpected real life reasons and are clear to last awhile the vacationee should be subbed.

alts and multi-clan membership
Why do believe this to be a problem and are there examples?

---

I also have a question which I meant to ask for a long time: As CL is run right now, are there any monetary costs?
If so, how much and how can I chip in?

maybe raise sub limit? was really tight for Lynx this time round.

Problem:
Individual players can slow down the entire clan league (by vacations and/or playing slowly)

Example:
I counted 6 players/teams in divA that so far only completed 0 or 1 of their 6 match-ups.
Extrapolating -and estimating- means that completing the last 2% of CL games will probably take 50% of the CL duration.
Highly undesirable.

Solution:
1* somehow restrict the usage of holidays. Especially in 3v3 team games, players taking holidays can drag games forever. I wouldn't know how this can be implemented in a fair way. Or how to implement it practically. (edit: removed: "so I'd be against it", maybe there is a solution somehow)
2* every x days a game will be created without taking into account how much games the players already have (as posted by krunx above)
3* a player will have 2 games maximum untill a certain date or until a certain level of completion. Thereafter, additional games are created every 1st day of the month, every 10 days, or something like that
4* the intital maximum number of ongoing games remains 2. This will increase to 3/4/5/6 after a certain amount of time.
5* more radical and maybe easier to implement: after a certain date, all remaining games are created at the same time (i.e. max ongoing games to 6)

I think solution 4 is the most elegant. Solution 5 will be fine in my opinion. Disadvantageous for very slow players and teams, but I think that they should be stimulated to make moves within a reasonable time for the sake of the next CL starting at a reasonable time after most players completed their CL games.

Edited 6/1/2017 09:13:35

Vacations:

I think vacations are indeed the biggest problem. I have an opponent who is on a 42 days + vacation, might even hit the 50-day mark. I also had another opponent going on a 30 days vacation. These things are extending the season.

A solution that might work would be part time substitutions. That means that player who need a vacation for more than 2 weeks need to get subbed out for that time span with another player. These substitutions doesn't count against the total Substitution count.

If there will be a fixed schedule that would mean that games can be started in time without the player on the long vacation but instead with an active player. That also decrease the chance of other people f.ex. teammates get overloaded with games.


Fixed schedule:

Another idea to the fixed Schedule would be the time frame to create new games.

We're playing a RoR game against Lynx going on for almost 2 months. Reduced with vacations it might be a real play time of 1 1/2 month. So i think everything below that time span would be to short. 50 days might be a good indicator, which is slightly more than 1 1/2 month.


Alts and Multi accounts:

I do like the idea of Aura Guardian. Taking the highest account as the reference seems to be an effective way to try to solve that problem. An exception of that rule only with good reasons.
U could also track the players in a list which will add new players for each season starting with this season to determine the CL Account of that player.


substitutions:
An official thread would add the possibility to help u out there, through i don't know if it's possible to link player accounts into the lineup when u leave google spreadsheets and use another system.


Voluntary work:

Scorekeeping isn't an option for me, since i know that i probably don't have the durability to enjoy doing that job.

But if u need help with creating and tracking a list of CL accounts or adding substitutions into a spreadsheet i could help u out there.

What do all those scorekeepers do? Isn't it automated already(that's what i thinking looking at those spreadsheets)

Games being decided by non-joins
If possible with CLOT (might require quite some programming?): do not delete such games after 3 days, but instead allow a replacement. I.e.: non-joins can be "removed by host" and replaced by the replacement. Delete after 7 days (or so) if still not joined.

More player level breakdown of stats needed
Is this really needed? It's clan league, not individual players of clans league.

Substitutions require manual work to be done by the league organizers
No idea how to solve this.

Notification issues: notification requires manual work by organizers and sometimes fails to reach the necessary audience
Require e-mails for the responsibles of each clans and let the CLOT send out (automated) emails?

Alts and multi-clan membership is a growing problem.
I don't see the problem per se, but I think transparency is most important. Every alt above a certain (low) level (say 30) of every player who joins must be declared and is published in advance. A rule that you can't switch constantly might be nice, but too restrictive isn't good either, it would hurt too many people who actually mean well.

Using Google Docs instead of a more robust database limits functionality and complicates improvements
MDL ladder seems to work well? Would it be possible to use the same type of database? Every player would need to "join" clan league similarly to having to join MDL? This sets up an immediately link between the "Clan League" database and the WL profile similar to a ladder CLOT. If you can't motivate your members to do this, they may not be all that suited to play in CL anyway. Also, by doing this, you know you will only have players who know how to push on a button, which they will have to do later as well when they have to press "join".

Lack of a clear schedule
Clan league takes too long, and specifically is much slower in some divisions than others
Starting games with a fixed schedule, similar to sports leagues all over the world seems like a great option here. You can really easily make a fixed schedule in advance as well. This does work better with an even than with an odd number of clans per division however.

For the lower divisions: get rid of qualifiers and simply make a large pool of clans who play 6 other clans on each template. I thought about it some more and this is really easy to do if you consider the following series:
2 games each: A-B B-C C-D D-E ...
2 games each: A-C C-E E-G ...
2 games each: A-D D-G G-J ...
...
If you think of the letters as being circular, i.e. A follows directly after the last letter, you can always either cycle through if the gap is not a divisor of the number of clans, or have a shifted copy if it is. Take 3 such series for each template and have each series used an equal amount of times (i.e. maximum of 1 difference in number times used) and you have a nicely balanced schedule.

Clan league is stalled by players taking vacations in excess of 40 days
Force replacement after 10 days? (i.e. automessage clan leader?)

you can't replace a player in an ongoing game though