A New Year, A Different ETF2L.
December 20, 2014
ETF2L is going Swiss, and we don’t mean we are moving into making time pieces or holey cheese! This January is going to mark the beginning of the biggest experiment the modern ETF2L has seen. We are excited to announce that we will be experimenting with the Swiss-Style tournament system. The aim of this news post is to guide you through the big changes in brief. Additionally ETF2L’s very own 
Permzilla will be featuring on a dedicated Fully Charged EU airing Monday the 22nd of December, where you will be able to ask any questions on the change.
What does this mean exactly? What is a Swiss System?
All teams will now be seeded into one of four different tiers. Roughly speaking, Premiership will have its very own tier; division 1&2 will combine to have its own tier as will 3&4 and 5&6. Based on 6v6 season 19 signups we have produced this example division of tiers:
- Tier 1 (Premiership) – 8 teams
- Tier 2 (1&2) – 32 teams
- Tier 3 (3&4) – 72 teams
- Tier 4 (5&6) – 184 teams
Premiership will remain relatively untouched by this change; it will still be run in a round robin style where every team will play every other team once. However the other 3 tiers will witness the bulk of the changes because not every team will face off against one another, instead your team will play a set number of games against teams with the same points or similar match records; it’s important to bear in mind you can’t play the same team twice .
The names of the tiers have not yet been decided, we are open to suggestions but were thinking of following the ESEA/CEVO trend with Premiership/Main/Intermediate/Open.
Weekly Schedule
One of the main features of the Swiss system is a stricter schedule. Therefore the week will now be divided into different segments:
- Sunday – Thursday: All available playing days for the week.
- Thursday 23:59: Result submission deadline.
- Friday & Saturday: Days reserved for potential replays and/or matches where Match Complaints are involved.
- Saturday 23:59: Fixtures created and default dates set.
The Thursday deadline is absolutely strict unless permission is granted for a replay/ match complaint by the admins. Matches without submitted results will be nullified.
The Premiership tier will also run alongside this schedule, however there will be slight differences since it continue to be run in a Round Robin format. Obviously the fixtures for all 7 weeks will be available in advance, the same as it is currently. Scheduling will run the same method for Premiership as any other tier.
How are the fixtures decided?
Fixtures will now be created by matching teams with a similar points total where possible, ignoring teams that have played each other already. This is intended to create closer matches throughout the season. Another benefit of the division tier system is that there is much less seeding to do for admins which reduced admin workload and also reduces the chance of poor seedings (which do happen).
Before the season the admins will seed the top 50% of each tier who will receive imaginary points. These imaginary points will be used in addition to any earned points in the first two weeks to create fixtures. In other words it will ensure that the matches in the first two weeks are closer while not compromising the fairness of the standings. More detail can be found here. Once imaginary points have been discarded in Week 2, fixtures will be continue to be created by matching teams with similar point totals.
In addition to this any new teams will now be added into the next available week of fixtures as soon as they sign up for the season. Instead of being added to the bottom of the pile, the new team will be given real match points from imaginary games based on a team rating given by the ETF2L team, however this will never place them in the top half of their tier and will usually be set to a low bound. It will still have a deadline of adding new teams into the season, but that is yet to be decided when.
Default Dates
Every Saturday default dates will be automatically created at the same time as fixtures. In order to accommodate this, each week a team will pick 3 days out of the possible 5 playing days (Sunday-Thursday) which they would prefer to play on. An overlapping day will then be chosen by the automatic scheduler.
Teams will also select a preferred time AND a time window in which they can start the fixture. If the preferred times match, that time will be chosen. If they do not, the time window will be looked at. If the time windows do not overlap, then a compromise will be set between the time windows. The deadline for selecting your playable days is Friday at 23:59. Thursday has been chosen as the new default date for matches with no days submitted, it was chosen as it had the highest number of ETF2L games, when ignoring Sunday.
Wildcards
An unfortunate necessity of this system is the elimination of wildcards. There are no Wildcards allowed in the Swiss-System, because in order to function it must adhere to strict deadlines. However in our opinion this minor drawback is vastly outweighed by the benefits of this new system.
Tiebreakers & Playoffs
Another by-product of the new system will be an increase in ties, particularly in the bigger tiers. To solve this issue ties will automatically be sorted within the table by round difference (rounds scored subtract rounds conceded). This applies to all ties, including ones that affect any playoff positions. Tiebreakers will therefore no longer be used.
Playoffs would now take place in all tiers . This system makes it much easier to run playoffs in all tiers, just one look at some of the playoff trees from Season 19 should make it clear.
Summary
ETF2L is excited to be able to implement this system and experiment with it. There may be some hiccups but this system offers great benefits and we believe it will create a more enjoyable league for the community. Once the system is complete we will test it internally and make sure it’s in working order, if everything goes smoothly it will be available for implementation for 6v6 Season 20.
We hope we have covered most questions regarding the details, but no doubt we will have missed something out. There will be a Fully Charged EU featuring Permzilla to answer any questions or issues regarding the planned changes on Monday 22nd December. We have created a thread here for you to ask your questions about the Swiss System. Make sure you tune in on the 22nd!
Here’s the VOD of said Fully Charged episode:
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content rss
Wow praise allah ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ
Permzilla literally saving esports and killing wildcards, best day of 2014 for me.
Finally
Sick
negativity because its cool
Wooh!
lovely
Best decision in 2014, looking forward to it.
fuk Perm
Looking forward to S20 :)
This looks awesome, makes me wanna play again!
Maybe you should step up your spy play, sideshow?
The wiki link is broken.
This sounds very interesting, looking forward to how it will all play out!
Are most matches actually set automatically? Man, I wish I would still be admin…
Question (I’m gonna be wasted when Permzilla is going to be at FC):
“To solve this issue ties will automatically be sorted within the table by round difference (rounds scored subtract rounds conceded).”
How do you treat koth_? Since you can score a difference of 5 points on 5cp maps but only a difference of 3 points on koth maps. Maybe it doesnt matter anyway, I have not put much thought into it…
platinum gold silver steel 8)
I love this, thanks etf2l.
diz gun be guud
We ranked up for nothing.
Thanks a lot.
interesting
The names of the tiers have not yet been decided, we are open to suggestions but were thinking of following the ESEA/CEVO trend with Premiership/Main/Intermediate/Open.
FailFish
Tier 1 should be called PERMZILLA TIER dont care about others
such a bs
No wildcards? I don’t care what you say but this is something I like!
Wp ETF2L. Swiss is a very good system and I’m glad to see it being implemented. The div system needs an overhaul and I am very pleased with this change.
rip
What about the whitelist ? ETF2L is making a step foward into competitive and that is awesome, but how competitive would be playing with cowmangler and all the other unlocks ? What about using a whitelist with only few unlocks like it was long time ago ?
no tiers just dreams
Thank you. Just. Thank you :’)
tier 1 just stays prem. No need for special names there imo
no please
Ok so… will the same system also be used in HL? Since there’s way less teams in the higher divs. (HL masterrace :^))
is this system being considered for Highlander season 8 as well?
We literally won our div for nothing lol. But yea, looking forward to closer games in the future :)
So much for that tiebreaker
I’m intrigued by how this is going to turn out. Should be interesting.
Does this apply to both 6vs6 and 9vs9 ? Otherwise great rules, seems promising.
Why not just call Tiers Division 1, 2, 3, 4
<3 Permzirra. Always there making video games better
I thought that the way ETF2L was coded was an osbtacle to a such seeding system, did you manage to overpass this?
By that they for sure meant it was a pain in the ass to edit the system due to unoptimized spaghetti-code
Nice!
Please no :(
No……….. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. N
NOOOOO
KILLING TF2
damn glad 2 didnt get mixed with 3 or lower, would’ve been terrible.
why
i love this, best thing to happen to etf2l
Ìnteresting. Good to see you guys apply new things and test them!
#notiersjustdreams
Can I be an admin?
Everyone says yes
div 3 boiz say no
ayo B)
Could have kept top divisions the same, since there should not be a problem with seeding (1&2 div)
:D
I have good division names:
1.Gryffindor
2.Slytherin
3.Ravenclaw
4.Hufflepuff
Difference between getting into Div 1 or Div 2 was brutal before, I like this more.
Premiership/Main/Intermediate/Open.
Please NO!
Tell it Tier1-4 … much better
Sounds really nice, glad to see this came to fruition :D
nice
http://www.quickmeme.com/img/8f/8fc47e57da13b3cdb9443d6714c79d3c2270640a6290c8938ead73c1cd99b8b3.jpg
amazing
I’m actually pretty happy about this because now this means that even if my team sucks for a while in preseason we still are in the same div as div 1 and have the opportunity to then improve during the season. Good shit fellas.
Maybe name the tiers as simple as low-mid-high+premiership?
Could be interesting anyway
> The names of the tiers have not yet been decided, we are open to suggestions but were thinking of following the ESEA/CEVO trend with Premiership/Main/Intermediate/Open.
Who is it on the ETF2L staff with such a raging boner for NA? Please stop.
Should definitely keep Premiership as the top tier name
who cares about the system where is the money perm Kappa
I always felt an overhaul was needed. This is a blessing to me <3
tl;dr UGC was right all along
Cool cos of playoffs (i hope), bad cos div 1 it`s not div 2 and now we will have lots of no-names in “main” division next to good teams.
I completely forgot hearing about this, sounds like it will be an awesome way to efficiently do games
yay
sick
bring back mid-
“6v6 low- off TEAMS ONLY” paradise is making a comeback
best idea ever :D
The skill system of low/mid/high could be making a comeback which would be fantastic. After years of weighted divs (all good teams stacked in 1 div), I think this system could be a great and refreshing change of pace for etf2l that, along with the new site, will prompt a few more brave changes from an obviously different species of head admin to what I am used to.
Personally I love the idea of low/mid/high/prem as a name. Not only for nostalgia’s sake but also the ease with which searching for games of a specific skill level used to be. While possibly unimaginative, it is honestly just a name and I haven’t seen anyone complain for the last 6/7 years about the divisions being numbered.
Best of luck to everyone and make sure to give it a try before commenting on the system and make sure to get a few backups on the roster because relying on wildcards is a thing of the past. Best of luck to all teams and ETF2L in general.
#20believe
Bad idea. Just do swiss for d3-6 and leave prem, 1, 2 divisions alone.
Why not just Prem/1/2/3? Why do you have to change the names?
Prem, Mid, Low, French
More like Prem, 1, mid, low, French
cause really div 1 and 2 are day and night sometimes
Prem, High, Mid, Low
etf2l is world of tanks now Kappa
Could always keep the name at Prem to Tier 4. Kinda reminds me of Quake.
Oh well, to be honest, i am so proud of my team being able to step it up to div5 and that’s not gonna be the case anymore :D However i think this will make the season a lot more interesting. Everything has to keep moving
if i wanted to do everything like the americans i wouldve moved to the USA…
whats next… a minimum 5 BigMacs before a game?
Premiership (or Tier 1) to Tier 4 would be as simple as it gets thanks to good old numbers.
Holly shit the gaps between and inside these tiers…