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What ruins ETF2L league seasons in the lower divisions (and some of the higher divisions) are teams without the backbone that form and fold, and a high number of teams misplaced who always end up rolling their divisions, (which effects divison 6 more) and causes other teams to drop (normally after their 2nd game of being rolled)

Now I get that seeding teams is hard and time consuming and the fact that ATM you seem to be limited to 6 divisions (when there probably could be 8-10).

Assuming that the divisions will not get increased past 6, and admins do not have the time/will to go through each individual teams looking for results (especially when they are not forthcoming with their own evidence/results). I think you should copy enemydown CSS, and introduce an entry ladder, where new teams must play 5 entry ladder games before they can enter the main ladder, and then 5 main ladder games before they can enter the league or any other competition (granted ED CSS may nolonger work anything like this).

This would serve two purposes one, it would stop all the teams that form enter the league and fold after 2 weeks (for normally various crap reasons, this isn’t just a problem in the lower divisions), as they would have had to complete 10 games in the ladders which would mean they would have 1-2 months behind them as a team.

The second purpose would be to give admins a clear indication of where these teams should be placed, yes 5 of their ladder results would be new teams v new teams, however 5 matches would be against teams with previous experience, and between the 10 results it should paint a pretty clear picture of where this team belongs come league seeding time.

This brings me to the fact that the ladder needs to be easier to use to quickly arrange matches.

Remove the need for scheduling, allow two teams to just post a ladder result.

Perhaps have another option in the challenge menu, which says challenge and post results or something similar, which only requires 1 clan to submit the challenge and upload the screen shots, which would just leave the other clan to click confirm on the results. Rather than the 3 steps now, challenge, wait for challenge to be accepted, arrange time, post results (granted the arrange time step can be skipped).

To make finding matches easier, I’m sure someone in this community would/could program an irc bot that sits in #etf2l or #(enter channel here), that responds to !ladder command and automatically matches teams up with others looking for a ladder match, or assuming the ladder ever gets used by the majority of teams !ladder20, !ladder40, !ladder150, where the number represents the highest placed team on the ladder you are willing to challenge (the ladder would have to become completely open for this to work).

I get that this may not be doable over the short term, or nobody may be willing to do this at all, these are just ideas, however I would like to know if the Admin team have any plans to better place teams in the low divisions, or do anything to increase stability and discourage teams across the divisions that form/reform then fold after a few weeks then rince and repeat every season, this is not just a problem for AFS league, over 30% of teams that played in season 7 have folded during or after that season finished.

Your idea is not bad, but I don’t think this will lead to more stable teams. There’s a variety of reason why teams drop.

Quoted from LikeThis

Would it make sense to allow teams to suggest what division they are placed in as long as they provide screenshots? The suggestion would have to reviewed by admins still but it might help.

Problem is, a lot of teams do basically ask for a specific div and/or their screenshots are used for placement. Just very limiting when you have 11 teams for 10 div3 slots, and the only places to put them are in a billion and one divisions of 5/6.

5 doesn’t seem too many for me – you have to play more than that in a season anyway! There can be a set time for the 5 to be played (ie. over a month) – teams can do it in a week if they want to, if the new season will start in a week and they want to get in.

I’d definitely like to see the ladder stuff implemented if anything, would make the ladder more worthwhile if people actually put more results and more teams played actively.

Determing a team’s skill level is really hard for a number of reasons. Any PCW result must be taken with a pinch of salt, either team could be offclassing, not playing seriously or actually be a mix, so using screenies provived by teams can only ever be an indication.

Past results in officials can only help so much too as people can drop at vital times, or maybe your demo had lag spikes, or was too pissed to aim properly! Form can be so up and down too, a team you roll one night can come back and beat you a week later.

I reckon this idea of an entry ladder is a really good one. The actual mechanics of how it would work would need to be ironed out, but at least you could guarantee that all teams entering the league has played a few matches together.

How about having a few teams that would be willing to play the new teams from different skill levels and see what happens. If, say, they played us (Div 6 and proud!) and rolled us, pit them against a decent div 5 team. They win that, they try a div 4 team etc.

You’re never gonna get away from the difference in skill across div 6 and 5 when there is sooooo many teams involved, and maybe we should have a div 7, but that means re-jigging a whole load of other things.

AFAIK Season 7 had 320 (ish?) sign ups and a whole load of clans on the waiting list, so it may be technically do-able, but it sounds like a lot of thought and work is needed to make that happen. An entry ladder sounds like a much easier way to get teams placed appropriately. Nice idea.

Edit: Ofc i just realised that no-one actually gives a shit about div6 anyway, I’d imagine the thinkng goes something a little like this: ‘If you cant get out of any div 6 by promotion, then you deserve to stay there, so FU!’

What about new div1/2 teams?
Would they have to go through the process? That would be ridiculous…

The idea seems nice for lower divisions though.

Well div 1/2 teams are a bit different – just because there’s very few. You can look at each team properly. I’d still say they should play a couple of games to make sure they’ll keep to a div 2 standard lets say (or if infact they exceed most division 2 teams and perhaps should be considered more for division 1).

Most of the players already are well known or have good experience, so generally you can form a better idea than some new div 4/5 team you’ve never even heard of the players from. Obviously it’s down to the teamwork as well, which is why coupled with some match results should provide a good enough estimate.

Can’t do too much to forsee drops/folds and i’m not sure if a penalty would punish the ones who hadn’t dropped (but had formed a new team with say 2-3 players who folded last season due to inactivity of the other half of their team let us say).

Quoted from kuma

div 2 teams seem to be the worst at folding. just make it so if they drop, they either can’t play the next season or at least automatically drop one division.

I think that this is quite difficult to realize, because they can just make a new team, or join a different team. Maybe it is a bit of an extreme idea, but what about not allowing any transfers during the season? It will make people think twice before leaving a team and by that, making a team drop due to a lack of players. It will also stimulate teamleaders to form a stable team, if they want to play a full season.

Lower division clans already do have to play ladder games pretty much, we place a higher priority over ones that do over ones that have no ladder games played.