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good idea, why not to try it :)

Would be nice to try it in a one-two days tournament or something

I love the idea, it works incredibly well in other games and while the flaws of dropped teams exist i believe there is a program called mantis (or somthing like that) used in TCG tournaments to decide round pairings and I think that has a workaround for it. I’m just looking into it now

“1) dropping teams. This would screw up the system. What would you do with the teams that were supposed to play these teams? You can’t give them the points, that would unbalance the divisiosn, you also can’t deny them the points, for the same reason. Also if you end up with an uneven amount of teams due to teams folding, then what.”

This is really not a problem. I play a lot of MTG, where they use this system. I have a lot of experience with this system, and dropping players is never a problem. This is partly because you have all the players in the same pool, and have a playoff between the best teams after the swiss rounds. And even if teams are dropping, you could just give the opponents default win, since it wouldn’t mess up the standings badly. Besides, the teams should drop between the rounds, so that you can remove the dropped teams before the next pairings are made.

“2) Fixtures for a week can only be generated when all matches of the previous week have been finished. As of now, plenty of people can’t even play a match on time when they know who their opponent is from the start of the season. Asking teams to play 1 match a week and schedule it with their opponent in the same week, is not really doable. It would mean very active teams, or fixed dates. That clashes with the amount of freedom we want to give you in the etf2l (map picks, liberal match dates)”

This could be a problem, but it could easily be solved by either having fixed dates, or having a biweekly matches. Everyone plays their game the first week, the second week new pairings are made, and the third week they play their next game. Can’t see how this would be a bigger problem than it was in the cups where you used randoms pairings. I realise that this would take a lot of time, but my example was just to illustrate a point.

“There is one huge problem with Swiss style tournaments. If one team gets on top and wins 1-2 matches suddenly it’s 1st vs. 4th and then 1st vs. 5th. If at all possible in a swiss you don’t play someone more than once. Therefore if you get to the top you can usually stay there and high-mid level teams get screwed over. it’s a good system but I don’t really think if works in small divisions like ETF2L has. It works better in larger fields (30+ competitors).”

This is also not an issue. The good thing about the swiss tournament system is that it works great with any number of players, and that you’re not totally screwed even if you lose a match (or two). I do however agree that it’s better and more fun with more players. They should have all the players in the same pool, and after a number of matches (depending on the number of players), there should be a top 8 playoff between the 8 best teams.