As stated previously in : https://www.warzone.com/Forum/371315-subject-cl12-beyond , I am currently working on taking the reigns of clan league leadership. Please use this thread to express any ideas or thoughts on improvements you think should be made or what concepts should be added. I have a few as well and would like your thoughts on them.

My general ideas:

* Scheduled games rather than tournaments as you mentioned in the other post - Yes please!

* More substitutions (back to 10 instead of 6)

* Get rid of the qualifiers but instead have a big pool of clans in C where each clan plays only 6 other clans (not every other clan) in each tournament. A reasonable schedule can be made so that clans play each other clan for a similar amount of "points".

* Discuss and post timelines long in advance and allow for a little more time between the different steps (see Clan Cup for an example). E.g.: why wait for CL11 to end to start with collecting and pruning possible templates for CL12.

I wouldn't get rid of qualifiers, but rather speed up the process by doing the qualifiers in a series of rt swiss tournaments; once B is done refining that part of the CLOT that is :p

Make a schedule a while ahead so people know when to be online; do a series of 16-20 rt tournaments, +5 points for first, +3 for second, +1 for third (depending on the amount of clans participating you might have to make one or two extra games to know who gets second/third) and promote the best 6 clans to C where they can play as A & B do. You can do the qualifiers before the rest of the CL, so A, B & C can be at the same time.

Edited 5/13/2019 15:40:45

If CLOT is to be used, make sure it runs with the least resources and anyone can run it; or have 2-3 players capable of running it. Never should we use players' personal resources, especially if they're costly.

There should be additional time between template selection and roster submission; also if possible, template panel needs to check the templates and not just the names. Strat ME-MME kind of confusion should not happen again. Collecting templates for CL12 few weeks later is good.

Adding mid-season registration/transfer window back.

Adding pending decisions on Related clans being in same division.

I think the current structure is good and no need to change it. I don't think RT format is needed for qualifiers or even for CL as a whole. I am still waiting for someone to run a test RT CL with 1 or 2 division to show why RT CL is better to have than having MD CL. Even if it is effectively better, it is nice to start RT CL rather than changing MD CL to RT CL.

If Cowboy ran RT tourneys, wouldn't he have to split them by geography? Lots of people on EU, not sure how many others come from NA. The concern seems to be getting qualifiers done in advance. Perhaps the schedule for CL could be altered to something closer to pro sports?

I.e. "Qualifying season" -> seeds -> round robins (sorted by ranking). You could send the top 6ish teams to A, second set to B, etc., and adapt this based on the number of participants.

Scheduling could be a pain though, and would necessitate a longer time frame. Unlike the NBA, we don't have an incentive to milk the season for as many games as possible. I think the end result is the same as what we would get holding the same CL teams to many repeated p/rs. But faster. With more responsiveness to changes in clan rosters and activity. I like to think the "regular" qualifying season would be less stressful and clans would have more flexibility. Semiactive clans don't have to scramble together rosters to fight relegation.

This would eliminate the promotion/relegation races and their related drama. And clan mismatches. This would also drastically reduce the impact of clans joining/leaving/reforming to play in Clan League. If you allow for players changing clans to play under new banners in new games (the equivalent of trades), then you will reduce the "clan" identity to an extent. I'm not sure how different this would be from the current format though. It would also require clan hoppers to have some restrictions to reduce potential sabotaging. I don't know how hard it would be to manage substitutions.

Yes, I realize that's a radical departure. It would be a pain to create those games unless you can automate the process. (I don't know how much the CLOT stuff can do, I've been off of CL stuff for quite a few seasons.)

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I really don't know enough about how CL clan roster spots work. This is AFAIK. If Masters took another few seasons away from CL (cuz ez wins), then returned, they would disrupt the P/R system or be an extra spot. Or they would start somewhere not A and absolutely roll everyone, while denying an otherwise deserving team a promotion spot. It would greatly smoothen things out if they

Likewise, I could see this benefiting clans like CORP who have a mix of players. They aren't primarily elite players, and aren't all noobs. If CORP was in division C or D, they could play whoever they wanted. But, being in B puts much more pressure on their stronger players to compete. They might not want to compete each season. They wouldn't have to decide between excluding people who learn templates, or throwing them in the deep end and risking dropping out of a p/r group.

I'm sure there are more examples out there, these were just off the top of my head.


TL DR: Swap from P/R League to Qualifying Season + Seeded Round Robins. Mimics the pro sports Regular/Playoff split.

+Clan Flexibility in rosters from season to season
+Less consistency required long term. clans can enter/leave seasons without real issues.
+ fewer mismatches. clans rise to their suitable opponents at the end of the qualifying season, not multiple p/r rounds.

- probably a pain to set up
- I suspect substitutions could be harder to implement
- probably requires more flexibility handling players travelling between clans. and stringent measures to prevent sabotage.

+/- clear departure from old formats.
+/- longer season. this is an issue depending on implementation. rushed, long season = negative. relaxed, long season = positive and less burnout.

I don't expect this idea to be actually implemented. I do think there are significant advantages over the current P/R system that are worth pursuing though.

Edited 5/14/2019 09:01:46

Rt'ing tournaments while a pain to organize, and needing a clear schedule further ahead of time, means you can go through that stage quicker. Right now the Europe tournament in Q1 is slower than any tournament in B, and only cookies in A is slower. That means C will likely start after B is finished, and A might be on its last legs.

If you do the Q's ahead of time, and have a clear schedule for finishes rather than starts, you can start C at the same time as A/B and have it run through more tournaments.

Splitting the same amount of tournaments in 2 parts means the second part won't start until all of the first part has finished, which will always slow down the process.

I agree your idea has some merit as well @Frozen Koala, but your + on fewer mismatches I completely disagree with. If all clans have to go through a qualifying season they'll have a lot more mismatches during that time. A clan returning and having to start from the bottom means they have to go through the system again, which might be a pain for two seasons, as they'll promote to B first season, and to A second season, but for instance Lynx would have to face Nuke Diplomacy in a qualifying season, and having to do that every season over would take some of the competitiveness out, and would make the seasons WAY longer.

I suggest you ban Farah

didn't we do that already?

I'm never baking a bread for you again.

@Meldarion RT tourneys are obviously quicker, have they historically been well attended? Is it hard to get people of different localities to play at the same time? I was usually never around for RT tourneys, so I don't know. I generally didn't have a bunch of uninterrupted hours to throw at the game in one sitting. :/

Like I said earlier, I would expect stuff based on the altered format to be longer. The actual CL would slow down, and there might be more emphasis on the more competitive games. It might feel a bit more special if some games aren't super high stakes. :D

I really don't think it matters that the second half of the competition waits for the first part. We already have that now, with CL potentially held up by a single division each season. This isn't new. Perhaps there's a way for us to force finishes at a predetermined time, much like how Fizzer forces seasonal finishes on ladder?

I think you're right about the long term number of mismatches. I think this is unavoidable with an altered format since its seeding everyone out of the general pool of clans that year. Instead of from specific predetermined groups. I still consider this vastly more flexible and forgiving in a competitive structure though. Pro games definitively end on the day, while ours can theoretically last ad infinitum. The thinking all stacks up. So some alterations would be necessary to the pro sports section to make it relatively playable here.

So, I want to keep the flexibility of the altered format, but it needs to be scalable. Unlike pro sports, we can have many concurrent "qualifying" games at once. If I were to edit my earlier suggestion:


* Preseason - Clans are sorted into a couple of pools by organizers based on rosters. Essentially an estimated A/B and C/Qualifying level power rankings, to draw parallels to the current. If someone's feeling brave, perhaps they can ask to move up to the shark pit, if there's room. A sort of formalized version of CL predictions. :P

* Qualifying rounds - Presumably the past sort eliminated most/all of the severe mismatches. This would be best if timed to start and finish (like I think you suggested), similar to the seasonal. It would need to be slower, obviously. I have 6 concurrent CL games. That seems like a fast start for even the 1v1s in a CL qualifier. We're down to approx 12ish games per team, rather than 20 though.

I looked through the ladder games. The slowest teams played 12 matches in approx. 5 months, and the faster ones in about 4. Its probably a fair assumption that most teams ran on 2 games at a time. Past the pick stage, its much easier to run 3-4 games at once though. Even with a reduced schedule, 5 months seems too long for a qualifying round.

I think a major benefit of this over the alternatives below, is that individual games become less important. TIme is definitely a core issue of this approach, and I'm not sure how much pacing can help. I think its important to have some variation though. We don't like monotonous food, even if its very well seasoned. Speeches are much better with variety in pacing and pitch. I'm sure some people would get upset that they need to play to "qualify". Golden State still plays to qualify. Admittedly, the elite clans aren't getting any lucrative TV deals.

Of course, we could always take it a step further and split the pools again to have smaller qualifying rounds. That would take us full circle.

* Preseason/Qualifying Round Alternatives - Instead of trying to compact a long qualifying season, clans could be seeded for regular CL off of a subset of games. This could be like choosing a champion to fight in a tournament, or a few tourneys with CL settings.

Another approach would be for CL organizers to manually seed clan league teams rather than clans, based on approximate skill estimation. If there's several teams that potentially deserve a spot in a higher tourney, they can have a team (not clan) battle. Or they could all get thrown in. Expanding the group temporarily seems the most fair if team battles are fairly even. I think this is essentially CL if organizers bypassed imposed P/R and size restrictions.

* "Playoffs" or "Serious tournaments" - I don't think anyone is really going to try to change this format atm. Its the lead-up.

I kinda like the P/R element to it. It keeps the clans doing poorly honest as they’re still motivated to play well.

RT tournies are kinda tough. There are players all around the world that play and no matter what time you make it, it will be inconvenient if not impossible for some players to make it. Faster play emphasizes different skills than the 3 day boots. Players take clan league very seriously which is why you see all the vacations and the thought put into those games cannot be replicated in RT games. I will be the first to say that the time some of these games takes to move along is quite frustrating, but I don't think it should be messed with.

Under the current format, seeding isn’t really necessary and I don’t think changing it around to make it possible is worth it. Teams know the score...get in the top 2 of your division and you promote, end in bottom 2 and you demote. There’s not that many levels where a new clan would have to spend years to get to A.

As far as the qualifiers slowing down the league, I think the best way is to make the qualifiers, separate divisions that work into the next season rather than the same season.

For instance clan league would be:

Division A: top 5 from A plus top 2 from B
Division B: Bottom two from A, 3rd to 5th in B, and top 2 in C
Division C: Bottom 2 from B, 3rd from C, top 2 from both qualifiers.
Division D1 and D2: Rest of the clans remaining, seeded accordingly to the previous season.

This gives the advantage of no hold up of waiting on the qualifiers to end for C to begin. Disadvantage is that it takes a season longer to get to A.

Edited 5/14/2019 20:30:33

Please don't add a 4th division level. Every other solution is better than that.

Staying the same certainly would not. C is likely to drag out clan league, for at least 3 more months and it is a pain to have to manage a new division half way through the season.
Under this system plus the schedule, getting to A will take one more season, but approximately the same amount of time as it currently takes as one more season will likely progress. It's easier to manage and easier to grasp than the current system as well.
RT is tough to manage, let alone very controversial, and any other system will still force a division to wait until the qualifiers are finished.

RT tournaments: this may potentially be added to Clan Cup once that is up and running well, and there's a demand for that.
I would say you want to have it tested there first to see if it works or not before even considering adding it to Clan League. After all, if it fails, it could destroy Clan League, which is a risk you don't want to take before it's been tested elsewhere.

Qualifiers have never slowed down CL, let alone for 3 months. Nothing suggests that this season will be different. Slowest div A tournaments like Europe and Cookies aren't nowhere near half done. Cookies has 4 games completed out of 21.

So with that argument out of the window, the issue is that it's a pain to manage. Could you elaborate? Tournaments need to be created anyway, scorekeeping needs to be done anyway,. Just at a different point in time, no?

Qualifiers can take a different form, but to replace them with a 4th division? Please don't :/ Clans are too volatile for that. 3 divs is already a lot. Plus it's more interesting to follow now.

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As for my actual suggestions, I suggest to change default division sizes from 7 to 8. It won't take any longer if we go with a schedule.

Also give clans more time to submit their lineups. I think this time it was only 5 days from template voting to lineup submission. No reason for such rush. Just decide the templates earlier, even during previous CL.

Hmmm. A lot of good points. The more I think about it, the more I think that flexibility on "special" cases in CL placement is the best option. Easier to manage/fewer games. Having other competitions lets there be lower pressure competitions too.

Another factor that occurred to me about seeding (while I was lazing about in class). Seeding has to matter beyond being grouped into sets of 6. There would need to be inherent advantages to placing higher that encourage people to try after they locked in a spot. Its not just the clans doing badly. Elite clans need a reason to keep trying as well, once they are a lock. There's some "easy" ways to give advantages and incentivize continued performance, but they aren't easy to balance. I can hear all the arguing and drama already. So yeah. I don't think preliminary seeding is worthwhile to pursue anymore, not if the flexibility can be achieved elsewhere. Its easier to just make exceptions if a clan suddenly returns/loses a lot of competitive players/etc.

I think Cowboy's idea to hold qualifiers for the next division C is good. It seems like it would go much smoother. It'll be pretty rare that a new clan joins in the divisions that looks ready to fight for A, more likely that an old one returns. Clans fizzling during their first seasons (in separate qualifiers) won't affect the main CL either.

It might be an interesting experiment to do RT tourneys/Clan events, separate from the current multiday format. Its probably impossible to get consistent attendance even if held on weekends. It does give less skilled clans a bigger shot. I could beat Ryiro just because he'd be AFK and I'd show up. Activity is half the battle. :D

Qualifiers have never slowed down CL, let alone for 3 months. Nothing suggests that this season will be different. Slowest div A tournaments like Europe and Cookies aren't nowhere near half done. Cookies has 4 games completed out of 21.

That is actually very inaccurate. While cookies and Europe may not be half done, the qualifiers are still a month out of being done, if that. There are still games not even created yet. Throw in a week to set up C (if that, last clan league took almost a month to transition from the Qs to C), the time it takes people to join tourneys, and finding people that will be willing to run division C and D. (Plus the hope that both C and D finish reasonably), it's likely C takes longer than A by at least a month.

As far as the notion it has never slowed down Clan League, that is false.
Clan League 9 Division C outlasted A by over two months, in fact it finished 5 games sooner. A didn't even beat Division D2. This also ignores the fact FCC, Hydra, and Lufredd all collapsed at the end of Clan League, had they kept playing Clan League could've gone on into January.

In Clan League 10, A and C finished about a week apart with A slightly edging out C in length.
It is obvious that post-qualifier divisions can hold up clan league, sometimes for a long period of time.

So with that argument out of the window, the issue is that it's a pain to manage. Could you elaborate? Tournaments need to be created anyway, scorekeeping needs to be done anyway,. Just at a different point in time, no?

It's difficult to find people willing to run 2 or 3 more divisions in the middle of clan league at a random time (dependent on the qualifiers finishing.) It also means more CLOT work, finding new scorekeepers, giving time for players to be added from the clot, etc.
If the idea is to make CL as painless to run as possible, then the qualifiers as they stand are a bad idea.

As for my actual suggestions, I suggest to change default division sizes from 7 to 8. It won't take any longer if we go with a schedule.

Not a terrible idea, as it would make promoting easier as well. But there are two drawbacks. The potential on one of those extra games pushing Clan League to be even longer. But more so, it increases the workloads on players in an already exhausting league. If more people show support for an increase in division size, then I will consider it more seriously. Right now it's a bit on the fringe and needs a bit more debate whether it's a good idea or not.

Also give clans more time to submit their lineups. I think this time it was only 5 days from template voting to lineup submission. No reason for such rush. Just decide the templates earlier, even during previous CL.

Yeah, that's a definite, the process to get this CL going was definitely rushed.

I dislike the option of another division. It takes way too long to get to div A that way, which will result in less clan diversitiy, as good players may prefer to play in div A and therefore leave their original clan which starts from the bottom.

My suggestion:
Make 3-4 games at once for Qs and punish stalling on completly lost games with auto-losses on all other games in this tournament.

My suggestion:
Make 3-4 games at once for Qs and punish stalling on completly lost games with auto-losses on all other games in this tournament.

I think you could do this for division A and B, where people certainly know they're stalling. But in Q's there's new clans with newer players; they might not know they're stalling and it'll only serve as demotivation to automatically have games forfeit.