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[Community] - Your thoughts please!
Created 11th July 2010 @ 18:17
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Quoted from Tikcus
…pcw’s are used for testing so should the ladder…
False. Pcw’s are used for practicing for your upcoming league match not trying out new weapons which are banned in league games and you won’t be allowed to use them anyway.
NB: Some very radical ideas and very tl;dr, probably won’t be feasible but hey it’s feedback :D
The thing with ladders in general is that it takes time for teams to settle into their relative skill brackets, so it is very likely higher teams will need to play vs lower teams for a couple of weeks. You can look at any ladders or systems which use ELO to see this is true (old WoW arena, old school clanbase, etc). There really is no way around it unless you start assigning teams a hidden “skill score” based on their ladder and league results which can then be used like matchmaking to place teams in their relative position.
The main problem with ladder is there’s currently no point in playing it. If there was a point, teams won’t mind playing vs vastly superior or lower skill teams – just look at the cups we had as an example (or even the FA cup, etc). If you can somehow make being high up on the ladder as prestigious or important as being in div 1/2, the ladder will be played.
There are a few ways I can think of achieving this from the top of my head.
1) Tie ladder achievments directly into league placing
Assign a “skill score” to each team based on ladder results alone. This will be based on their rating, games played, w/l ratio etc. but will not reset even if dropped from the ladder. You then place teams in divisions relative to this number.
To do this though, you’d need a longer and well defined “on season” and “off season”. The on season would be the regular league we have now, set at pre-defined times during the year – Dec-Jan, Apr-May, Sept-Oct. You now have 1-2 months of “off season” between each league session which can be used to focus on the ladder. How you do during these 2 months defines where you will be placed in the next “on season”. As these “off-seasons” are intentionally set at the busiest times of the year (summer, xmas etc) it gives teams more flexibility to schedule games themselves and avoids another AFS situation.
This method is the best imo, as it gives a numerical backing behind each team and places teams solely on merit. However, it may not be popular in the community for precisely that reason. You can also give more active teams a spot in the divisions as you will be able to see who has played the most games and you will at least know they are fairly stable.
2) Ladder system with regular “seasonal” ladder resets
This would work like the WoW arena system does, teams basically fight for the top spot with regular resets (maybe once every 4 months, or 2 if you are to tie it into the league system like 1). At the end, the top teams are invited to a lan to compete for the top spot, like ESEA-I is done in the US.
(Of course if you are to tie it to the league then 2 months is too frequent to host a lan everytime, so maybe only the summer off-season would be used for this suggestion.)
This is less realistic than the first solution because:
a) You need money
and
b) Lower skilled teams may not feel there is any “point” to competing
Possible solutions:
a) Can be solved by piggybacking onto an existing lan like i-series or Assembly and holding it there.
Can also be solved by getting sponsors etc. but this is difficult and may take the league into a different direction than we want (another discussion).
b) Integrate with suggestion 1) (these ideas are not mutually exclusive) to allow teams to place themselves in divisions.
Due to the large number of teams, you may also need to divide the ladder into divisions, though not by skill but by territory. So we can have a Western division, a Central division and an Eastern division, depending on where the team is mainly based. This does not segregate teams because you will still be playing vs teams in other regions in the league. The top 8 or so clans from each of these divisions can be invited to the lan at the end.
Cons:
This would make the ladder more important than the league, something I’m sure most people don’t want. There’s ways of solving this of course, but even if the ladder does become more important than the league what’s the problem? Don’t be so resistant to change :D
Maybe when I think of some more realistic ideas I’ll post again, but these two systems in place would make the league a lot better imo.
still don’t get why you think we need a ladder at all … we should try to improve the league and forget about the ladder, imho.
The major challange is to find a way to improve the “folding-teams problem”. Afaik approximately 30% of the participating teams fold during a season and that’s way too many.
Solve this problem and you won’t have the problem to find spots for new teams because there aren’t like 100 new teams but maybe 10-20.
And keep in mind that it’s NOT necessary to have perfectly balanced divisions. That’s just not how a league system works. Take a look at some football divisions, especially amateur divisions.
I still don’t get why you all think that is what’s causing the trouble. It’s not. If some teams really fold because they got bashed then they just don’t want to play competitive and it’s no great loss to us if they don’t participate any more, imo.
Quoted from Tikcus
The problem of div 1-3 teams not wanting to play div 4-6 teams in the ladder is an easy fix.
Restart the ladder, all teams are added,
New teams start on a rating of 700
Division 6 teams start on a rating of 800
Division 5 teams start on a rating of 900
Division 4 teams start on a rating of 1000
Division 3 teams start on a rating of 1100
Division 2 teams start on a rating of 1200
Division 1 teams start on a rating of 1300
This has been tried as far as I know. But a lot of people did not like it so it was removed again.
Edit: it’s still possible, without restarting the ladder.
Entry Ladder is probably the best idea I’ve heard. Gives a little bit more of a spark to competiting in ETF2L.
Though the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow should be rewarding activity and dedication, even if you get rolled every game you play (least the admins know your div6).
Quoted from Hildreth
Entry Ladder is probably the best idea I’ve heard. Gives a little bit more of a spark to competiting in ETF2L.
Though the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow should be rewarding activity and dedication, even if you get rolled every game you play (least the admins know your div6).
Rewarded with what? Why should you need to endure many rollings to get rewarded, that’s not what comp TF2 is about. The focus is on your skill, not how well you can take a beating/how many games you can play.
What you say is true however, a ladder does directly reward a team who plays both actively and well. However it is this “actively” that is the holding point for most higher teams. It seems most div 1/2 teams would rather play less than more, and when a div 6 team grinds out 500 games to get a higher rating than a div 1 team who only wants to play once, the div 1 team will quit.
That is why you need some sort of incentive for them to play actively.
for the div 1/2 can’t be arsed to play teams, that is where the results only part works!
They play a pcw/wireplay/els/esh game or whatever, jump into team admin, post the result it gets added as a ladder match played, so they are active on a ladder without having to play extra games
All league games should also be recorded and count towards activity on the ladder (so teams are not marked inactive as long as they play some form of 6v6 match within ETF2L), and the results should be recorded on the ladder as above.
edit
going back to rewarding active teams, why not? for years on the ED CSS ladder, the most active teams were rewarded with a prize, these incentives were always popular due to the not having to win anything.
If you don’t understand why that is comerically viable, i’ll explain as simply as possible
more activity = more hits = more advertising revenue/more viable for sponsors
That doesn’t work with an ELO system, unless you have every team on the ladder regardless of whether they want to be there or not. But then it would be more like a ranking across all leagues than a ladder.
About sponsorship, you’re right in a sense except it’s more about exposure than whether it’s commercially viable, as sponsors NEVER break even with the current esports model in place.
Of course you can reward teams for activity, what I mean is it shouldn’t be rewarded OVER skill. So a pixel trophy for the most active team would be a good idea.
Quoted from kuma
That doesn’t work with an ELO system, unless you have every team on the ladder regardless of whether they want to be there or not. But then it would be more like a ranking across all leagues than a ladder.
you’re starting to understand.
All teams should be on the ladder, the reason the current ladder failed is because few of the better clans entered, and it was used only by the few clans who thought a ladder was a good idea and tried to make it work.
Yes I get that the top teams/players don’t actually like playing TF2, and wouldn’t want to be very active, regarding playing more games, hence the many posts i’ve made with solutions.
Unfortunatly the massive problems in ETF2L will not be fixed easily.
If nothing is done Division 6 will still be a joke, the ladder will be almost unused and teams will keep folding (for whatever shitty reason) and reforming without penalty
Quoted from kuma
Of course you can reward teams for activity, what I mean is it shouldn’t be rewarded OVER skill. So a pixel trophy for the most active team would be a good idea.
Cold hard cash/prizes is better than a pixel trophy, tbh a pixel trophy wouldn’t promote activity for 8 year olds, never mind the age ranges here
I’m not suggesting you don’t reward skill, and there are plenty of places/competitions that do just reward skill, but if the ‘skill’ can’t be bothered to play don’t reward them
It’s better to get teams to sign up and play because they want to than force them onto a ladder. If teams can gain/lose rating from matches outside the ladder then it isn’t a ladder at all, just a list of TF2 teams by ranking.
The ladder can be a great thing, it just depends on how it’s implemented.
However, if higher teams really don’t want to play even if the incentive is at least equal to playing in the league, then the problem is with the ladder as a format more than anything else. The only way to preserve the ladder in this case would be to tailor it specifically to div 6 and below teams by using it as an entry ladder as you mentioned before (it would essentially be a div 7).
Quoted from Tikcus
[…]
Cold hard cash/prizes is better than a pixel trophy, tbh a pixel trophy wouldn’t promote activity for 8 year olds, never mind the age ranges here
I’m not suggesting you don’t reward skill, and there are plenty of places/competitions that do just reward skill, but if the ‘skill’ can’t be bothered to play don’t reward them
If I’m not mistaken that’s essentially what the div 1 winners get – a pixel trophy. Are you saying we should pay the most active team with cash while the top TF2 team in Europe gets an image added to their clan page?
Where are you going to get this cash from?
Hmmm, a ladder for new teams only is the best option I reckon. None of the top teams want ladder matches, fine. The teams on the ladder are mostly div6/5 at the moment anyways. Why not make it div6 or ‘below’ only teams, gives newbies something to base their skill level on and may help with div 6 placements too.
New teams with new players have to join the ladder to prove they have the commitment to playing regularly enough to not fold mid season and also give admins a clue as to their skill level.
Now we’re getting somewhere! At the moment having 20 active ladder teams seems a little bit pointless!
We’ve rejoined again now AFS has finished, maybe others will too?
Quoted from kuma
[…]
If I’m not mistaken that’s essentially what the div 1 winners get – a pixel trophy. Are you saying we should pay the most active team with cash while the top TF2 team in Europe gets an image added to their clan page?
Didn’t idk? get a bunch of headphones for winning s7?
Obviously being div1 they really needed those.. lol
Quoted from kuma
It’s better to get teams to sign up and play because they want to than force them onto a ladder. If teams can gain/lose rating from matches outside the ladder then it isn’t a ladder at all, just a list of TF2 teams by ranking.
The ladder can be a great thing, it just depends on how it’s implemented.
However, if higher teams really don’t want to play even if the incentive is at least equal to playing in the league, then the problem is with the ladder as a format more than anything else. The only way to preserve the ladder in this case would be to tailor it specifically to div 6 and below teams by using it as an entry ladder as you mentioned before (it would essentially be a div 7).
It would still fail to work in this sence, if only div 6 teams and new teams are present.
As alot of the ‘NEW’ teams are more than capable of beating div 4 teams, and would still end up in Div 6 come league season, roll a div 6 (wasting their time, and everyone elses) then spend the next season rolling division 5, or just dropping as it is pointless.
One of ETF2L’s big problem is that teams in div 6 are better than some in div 4, and some in Div 5 are better than some in Div 4 etc, i’m sure teams in Div 4 are better than some in Div 3.
Perhaps it would be better (this will not happen ever) to hold off season 8, with more mis matched and unstable teams.
Run a 330 team ladder (seeding 70 teams div 1 – 3, increasing their entry elo, as above) for 3 months record every result available, teams that drop within that 3 months are not allowed to enter the up coming league season (so only stable teams enter) the remaining teams after 3 months are seeded according to their final positions. And in theory we should have a season where teams are almost entirly in divisions where they should be.
but as I said this will not happen, so some fix is needed to the current system
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