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SEASON SCHEDULE
The regular season has 7 match weeks, followed up by a catch-up week and three weeks of title playoffs in Premiership or two weeks of potential tiebreakers for other divisions. Here’s the full schedule:

Signups: January 2 – 9
Seeding: January 9 – 11
Publishing of Provisional Divisions: January 12
Schedule Week: January 13 – 19
Main Season: January 20 – March 2 (7 weeks)
Catch-up Week: March 10 – 16
Playoffs: March 17 – April 6

So instead of ‘potential tiebreakers’, a playoff tournament for every division with multiple subdivisions. Is that enough thought, emb?

I’m sure this is really easy to work out, and is clearly the correct solution. There should be actual champions of each division. It’s so much more fun. I don’t believe it’s my job to work out the details, though I can if no one else wants to.

I see the provisional divisions have been published. The strong-but-new teams I was referring to have mostly been placed in 6, though some weaker ones are in 5. Does this matter? I suppose people can do whatever they want.

Quoted from Spike Himself

Or just add Div 7. Div 6 might just get a little more competitive that way. The skill gap between top div 6 and bottom 6 can be huge, and the same goes for div 5. Top div 5 and bottom div 6 is massive (more so than, for example top div 3 and bottom div 4).

There’s no way to prove any of this though, it’s just based on my experience.

I would be up for a div 7

Quoted from fraac

You don’t think a tournament to crown division champions would be more fun?

It has been said tons of time that it would, but there’s no time for it with the actual schedule. That would mean playing only 2 season per year, which is still worse than having those playoffs.
Also who really cares who’s the best of div 6 once you have proven to be strong enough for going div 5.

This make a harder div 6 makes no sense at all btw imo.
Even if we make a div 7, there will be someone that sooner or later will ask “make a harder div 7” – which is supposed to be made of, if I have understood right, of new comp players – because they have improved very fast or seem to be pretty talented.

Although there’s indeed a huge difference between top div 6 and bottom div 6, it’s true as well that between top div 6 and bottom div 5 there’s no big difference, so that div 6 wouldnt make sense at all to exist if that div 7 were created.

Quoted from Leif

Also who really cares who’s the best of div 6 once you have proven to be strong enough for going div 5.

Yeah, and ultimately why should anyone care about anything except Prem? Great point. In fact scrap ETF2L and let’s all watch ESEA Invite.

Quoted from Hallow

[…]
Eh, I don’t know where you’ve been, but last I checked no one cared about winning anything but Prem. You play the season for fun and for experience. Winning gives you a promotion, but that can be done through screenshots anyway and doesn’t matter that much,

Yeah, lets all just fuck around in pcws and officials. Who cares about winning anyways, we don’t get money or hardware for it, why should we try to win. If anything we should all just stop playing and go do something else since winning this is so incredibly fruitless.
fffffffffffffffffffffffffflawwwlesss logic

Quoted from Hallow

[…]
People play to win, and winning gets them to Prem. If you fuck around you’re not gonna get there. I was just saying that it’s not important to be the best of div6, since there’s already 6 divisions for people who are. The rules allow a certain amount of teams from each subdivision to go up, if you qualify, you get to play versus better opponents. Winning = Advancing. Having a playoff for div 6 because people want to feel good about themselves is a waste of time.

What is this ‘fun’ thing I keep hearing about

Quoted from emb

A playoff between 8 division winners would take three weeks. A playoff between 16 division winners would take four. Playoffs can only happen after ties for first place have been resolved. … As for Division 6, it’s biggest problem is that of being an entry level division. By definition, an entry level division gathers over a hundred applications from teams who have little to none ETF2L history, or rate their own skill as entry-level even if they do. You cannot manually seed a division where most teams have nothing to indicate their actual skill level.

I would schedule the playoff tournaments to happen over a weekend. This solves more problems than it raises and most importantly optimises fun. And that’s the point, right?

As for the difficulty of seeding low division teams, I notice that you rate league experience over skill, leading to some anomalous seedings. Simply because, as you say, you have no indication of their skill. But I do. I’ve played with hundreds of low division players and have networked stats on thousands of them. I could easily produce many competitive division 5s and 6s with only a few errors. You didn’t know this, but in future if you want a more competitive and fun league and can swallow your pride, feel free to ask for help.