9 December 2014 - 15:07 EST
Hi everyone, this thread is here to see if there would be support from the community for ladder system after S5 and particularly our implementation of it. It's called Simple Ladder System. Most of it is explained in the doc that will be linked a bit lower. First I wanna talk about why and what's good or bad about it. Over the past few weeks we showed some people and got a bit of feedback. So let's start.
The classic season is not very dynamic, sometimes it can be weeks between your matches. It could be said that divisions promote big gaps in the skill. It can take half a year before new team can join in on the fun. Teams change a lot during season, be it practice or new members or old ones leaving, and they might find that the division is no longer proper for them. Some teams would like to take breaks at different times than others. Sometimes you need the break to restock the roster. Maybe you can come up with more of these issues.
I think that we need a new system for the competition, dynamic system to meet our needs. Ladder could allow us to have this flexible system to allow for sustainable and perpetual competition. Problem with ladder, as most known, is that they are fairly complicated to implement as they are mostly made for tens of thousands of players and are based on some points system, be it Elo, MMR, what have you. NSL would need something tailored to fit 5 or 50 or 100 teams, that would be easy to understand and implement. That's where our system comes in. It's time for the link, but keep in mind this is a proposal, and if we were to get the support from you and go ahead from zefram, there is also code to be implemented and tested, UI to be designed. Simple is already coding bits here and there, we have some ideas how UI should look like, but we would like greenlight first before we put more work into this. After you read the doc, I still have few lines for you to read:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q20xvTm3Xo4UxTwB95J7XjhQ7zFtKSiuwKj3-ym7w_8/edit?usp=sharing
To address some of the issues we already heard:
We don't have official support from Zefram unless there is interest in the community first. Zefram thinks the classic season is sustainable format, for at least another season, with the activity that's going on in div 2-4 and that it would be only for prem div and div 1 which might not even play afer S5.
That's why this thread is here, to see if there is support and if you got any ideas about this. Basically we need to discuss 2 things, is (1) ladder style better and (2) is our implementation good enough for it.
For me I don't think that to choose a ladder or not is based on the amount of active teams, the system works for few or dozens up to hundreds. And it will be easier for teams to pick the competition up or take a short break on their own, no need to disband or wait few months to get into it.
There were concerns that teams could only play 1 day a week, be it pcw or match, and that this would not allow for time to organize the schedule (both in the team and with the opponent).
To that I say that this means the team wont be very active, the outlier section talks about this. Maybe some kind of team calendar or chat room or something available on the smartphones would help the team to organize itself. But this is out of the SLS scope and this kind of team would be in disadvantage with low amount of matches played, but then again in classic season, if you don't get practice, it's almost the same.
Another issue was that teams are lazy and would be hard pressed to challenge or organize stuff. Well, the ladder itself promotes active behavior, by playing more matches you get more chances to jump ahead and with inactivity you drop down without even loosing a match by people jumping over teams above you. I believe there would be some "tryhards" and active teams to show the others that being active is a good thing. The UI should also help making it easy. We could implement email reminders to team leaders, etc.
There was also concern that individual matches are not that important anymore and that there is no final goal in the ladder.
That's a valid concern, be it for casters, the viewers or teams themselves. I see the ladder as sustainable perpetual system and we could build on top of that. For example quarterly tournament with different levels and seeded based on the ladder. Ladder would pause in the time of the tourney and then continue right after it. Something like EU Open was.
Another concern was what kind of situation this brings to the casters/refs/admins.
If the system is properly implemented, there would be no need for google spreadsheet, all could be done with proper UI changes. For example main ladder page would be ranked list from which you could issue challenges, there would be side by side with list of upcoming challenges/matches, both refs and casters could signup in there and link to stream could show in the list. Refs would be updating match pages directly and the info would be immediately available to the whole community. Ofc some coding would have to be done, so we cannot have this version out tomorrow. But Simple is looking trough the code and tinkering a bit and thinks it's not that hard and challenges system was already partially implemented on ENSL.
Alright I think we covered all the concerns we know about, now let us know what you think. Have at it. Please try to keep format of 2 parts, first if you are pro or against, why and when you would change your mind; second, what is wrong with or how in love you are with our system. :)
Simple (HBZ) & Vindaloo (onFire)
EDIT: forgot the link silly me :)
The classic season is not very dynamic, sometimes it can be weeks between your matches. It could be said that divisions promote big gaps in the skill. It can take half a year before new team can join in on the fun. Teams change a lot during season, be it practice or new members or old ones leaving, and they might find that the division is no longer proper for them. Some teams would like to take breaks at different times than others. Sometimes you need the break to restock the roster. Maybe you can come up with more of these issues.
I think that we need a new system for the competition, dynamic system to meet our needs. Ladder could allow us to have this flexible system to allow for sustainable and perpetual competition. Problem with ladder, as most known, is that they are fairly complicated to implement as they are mostly made for tens of thousands of players and are based on some points system, be it Elo, MMR, what have you. NSL would need something tailored to fit 5 or 50 or 100 teams, that would be easy to understand and implement. That's where our system comes in. It's time for the link, but keep in mind this is a proposal, and if we were to get the support from you and go ahead from zefram, there is also code to be implemented and tested, UI to be designed. Simple is already coding bits here and there, we have some ideas how UI should look like, but we would like greenlight first before we put more work into this. After you read the doc, I still have few lines for you to read:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q20xvTm3Xo4UxTwB95J7XjhQ7zFtKSiuwKj3-ym7w_8/edit?usp=sharing
To address some of the issues we already heard:
We don't have official support from Zefram unless there is interest in the community first. Zefram thinks the classic season is sustainable format, for at least another season, with the activity that's going on in div 2-4 and that it would be only for prem div and div 1 which might not even play afer S5.
That's why this thread is here, to see if there is support and if you got any ideas about this. Basically we need to discuss 2 things, is (1) ladder style better and (2) is our implementation good enough for it.
For me I don't think that to choose a ladder or not is based on the amount of active teams, the system works for few or dozens up to hundreds. And it will be easier for teams to pick the competition up or take a short break on their own, no need to disband or wait few months to get into it.
There were concerns that teams could only play 1 day a week, be it pcw or match, and that this would not allow for time to organize the schedule (both in the team and with the opponent).
To that I say that this means the team wont be very active, the outlier section talks about this. Maybe some kind of team calendar or chat room or something available on the smartphones would help the team to organize itself. But this is out of the SLS scope and this kind of team would be in disadvantage with low amount of matches played, but then again in classic season, if you don't get practice, it's almost the same.
Another issue was that teams are lazy and would be hard pressed to challenge or organize stuff. Well, the ladder itself promotes active behavior, by playing more matches you get more chances to jump ahead and with inactivity you drop down without even loosing a match by people jumping over teams above you. I believe there would be some "tryhards" and active teams to show the others that being active is a good thing. The UI should also help making it easy. We could implement email reminders to team leaders, etc.
There was also concern that individual matches are not that important anymore and that there is no final goal in the ladder.
That's a valid concern, be it for casters, the viewers or teams themselves. I see the ladder as sustainable perpetual system and we could build on top of that. For example quarterly tournament with different levels and seeded based on the ladder. Ladder would pause in the time of the tourney and then continue right after it. Something like EU Open was.
Another concern was what kind of situation this brings to the casters/refs/admins.
If the system is properly implemented, there would be no need for google spreadsheet, all could be done with proper UI changes. For example main ladder page would be ranked list from which you could issue challenges, there would be side by side with list of upcoming challenges/matches, both refs and casters could signup in there and link to stream could show in the list. Refs would be updating match pages directly and the info would be immediately available to the whole community. Ofc some coding would have to be done, so we cannot have this version out tomorrow. But Simple is looking trough the code and tinkering a bit and thinks it's not that hard and challenges system was already partially implemented on ENSL.
Alright I think we covered all the concerns we know about, now let us know what you think. Have at it. Please try to keep format of 2 parts, first if you are pro or against, why and when you would change your mind; second, what is wrong with or how in love you are with our system. :)
Simple (HBZ) & Vindaloo (onFire)
EDIT: forgot the link silly me :)
