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div1 looks like it’ll be nuts

and of course https://imgur.com/a/M5GwI

Old divs are back wtf? When did this happen?

Quoted from hr

Old divs are back wtf? When did this happen?

http://etf2l.org/2018/01/27/season-29-provisional-tiers-published/

Glad to see people are happy about the divisions being brought back and i’m sure some are wondering how and why this happened. The truth is I was the mastermind behind this, pulling the strings of the ETF2L administration from the shadows. Why do you think I joined Loli Squad? Yes no top prem teams wanted me and they were the only team I could find but more importantly they were the team with multiple admins who had connections to the top of ETF2L. Without anyone suspecting a thing I convinced the admins that the difference in skill between the teams in high was a problem. In a division with 30-40 teams, the season is more enjoyable for the teams good enough to have a chance of making playoffs and the teams who have to fight to stay in the division. Both ends of the division have a goal and something to play for, making every official more competitive and making PCWs more important.

However in a division with over 30 teams there ends up being those who are good enough to beat the bottom high teams easily but not good enough to compete with the top 6-10 teams. This means the teams in the middle have nothing to play for, no goal to work towards, no reason to practice for officials and no real reason to improve as a team. Over 30 teams competing for a top 6 finish is not a good system because it removes any sort of goal and lowers the competitive drive which in turn lowers the overall level of fun. When there are only 8 teams in a division with 4 playoff spots and 1 or 2 relegation spots then the chances are that ALL 8 teams will be playing for either a playoff spot or to avoid relegation. This results in a competitive drive with teams playing for some sort of goal. TF2 and any game in general becomes a lot more enjoyable when you are playing to achieve something, even if its as meaningless as something like making playoffs in division 2. It’s pretty obvious once you take a second to think about it. I often don’t think about things for very long before doing them but it only takes 1 second of thinking about before it becomes obvious.

I think the admins have made a great decision here, it’s great that TF2 has such great admins after all these years. Although looking back, after 6 years of playing TF2 from the age of 14-20 and playing in like 15 seasons of ETF2L. After thinking about it for about 1 second, I have come to the conclusion that those who made the baffling, pointless and idiotic decision to switch to the Swiss system was nothing short of incredible, I have really come to see how much of a colossal fuck up of a mess the system you made was.

Quoted from Kaylus

http://etf2l.org/forum/league/topic-34290/page-1/

That’s great but the admins had decided before you made that thread.

Quoted from Bloodis

This is a fair point but I doubt we would do anything huge about this as we already find our current system working all well and fine for the lower skill levels at least, so that the only skill level affected by the Swiss system now where this would see benefit of is high so that the “lower” high teams would actually be able to only compete against the other similarly skilled teams in their groups, while letting the top high teams play in their own division alone.

I had been pulling the strings and deciding the future of ETF2L long before your strawpoll. High teams were the ones who were really being screwed over by the swiss system. Yet I still think the Swiss System is an awful system compared to the old system or my alternative one where lower tiers are randomly split into divisions of about 8 teams where the top and bottom 2 teams of each division play a double elimination playoff system at the end. For example in “Mid” this season you could randomly split the tier into 6 divisions of 8 teams where the top 2 teams of each division make it into the “Mid” playoffs with 6 teams in the upper bracket and 6 teams in the lower bracket resulting in 6 teams being promoted to high while also competing for 1st place. Meanwhile the 12 teams that came 8th and 7th in each division also play a double elimination playoff with the 6 lowest placed teams put in the lower bracket and the 2nd lowest in the upper bracket until 6 teams are relegated. This is good because it creates more competition, goals and stakes which = more fun. 31st ranked mid team playing vs 32nd ranked mid team is more interesting if they are playing for a spot in the “mid playoffs” or to avoid relegation.

Quoted from Aoshi

Swiss works very well for everything below high as seeding everything there is a lot more difficult. Not to mention that swiss is also more automated and easier to manage for both the admins as well as the players.

So heck off sheepy ;)

You don’t need to seed the teams, you can take all the teams in mid and randomly split them into 6 divisions. The teams that finish top 2 in each of the 6 divisions make playoffs. If people worry that randomly splitting the teams of mid into divisions could cause a certain division to be stacked (unlikely) then make it so that the top 4 teams from each division make playoffs, this ensures that the best teams will make playoffs and the team that comes last will almost always be the worst team. It’s basically like splitting the mid tier into 6 different groups so that the main season is more interesting for the players because most teams will be either fighting for a playoff spot or fighting to stay in mid and not get relegated to low. This system means that during the main season, almost every team in mid would be fighting for the top 4 playoff spot or fighting to avoid last place.

You could do this with mid and low with 6 teams getting promoted in playoffs and 6 teams getting relegated by finishing last in their division. Randomly splitting mid into smaller groups where the best go on to play each other in playoffs is in my opinion a better system because almost every team will have a goal to play for in the main season. The mid team ranked 30th that have nothing to play for might instead be ranked 5th and going for playoffs or ranked 7th and fighting to stay in mid. They will be playing officials for a competitive goal rather than playing for no reason other than fun itself.

There is no need for seeding, do it randomly and the worst teams will pretty much almost finish last and the best teams will usually finish in the top 2 and always in the top 4. Instead of having Divison 2, 3, 4 ect you would have “Mid 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6”. This system shouldn’t be too hard to manage, just randomly split the teams in mid into divisions of 8 or so and have the top 2-4 teams of each group play against each other in a playoff bracket after the main season. It would make the game fun and competitive for everyone in mid and not just the top few teams.

If you say so Sheepy :)
Admins told me otherwise when I did that thread but It’s quite alright I’m just glad to see the current system

Probably better off asking Mid/Open players which system they prefer, I only see High/Prem people here commenting on this.