Summary of league structure: WDYT?

[mattgslater]

What do you think of this?

1) Each Basic League team gets up to four games per calendar month, two scheduled "matches" and up to two open "challenges" which may be saved, and which may be used against a broader pool of teams, the Champions and Developmental leagues (see 3 and 4, below). In the last month, there's a postseason tournament instead of the matches. Over the four-month season, it's possible to play up to 14 games before the tournament. You can run two teams, but can only enter one in the tournament. Your teams must be of different races.

2) The postseason tournament is 2, 3 or 5 games for each team, beginning with a 2-round ladder, then an elimination round, then two rounds to rank the final four (like the Olympics, there's a prize for 3rd). Seeding in the postseason tournament is based on Victory Points, with "fewest losses" as the tiebreaker (if there's still a tie, it goes to scoring ratio, then cas ratio, then Treasury, then dice). You get 7 VP for winning, 4 VP for losing, and 5 for tying at the end of the second half, even if you go on to lose in overtime. You need 50 VP to enter the tournament, so you can get in with just eight games at 6-2 or better, but if you lose everything you must play 13 to qualify. If more than 12 teams qualify, teams will be eliminated based on most losses first, then fewest VP, then dice.

3) The top three finishers in the tournament enter the Champions league, and compete in a different pool; the rest must start over in the Basic League next season. Traditionally, coaches play just a few games with their Champions teams, instead starting on a new team of a different race. Champions teams get no matches (only challenges) and don't disband from season to season, and may play on for years. Only teams that have qualified for the tournament may play against a Champions team.

4) If you know you don't want to play in the tournament with a team, or want to get your feet wet with it before you commit, or want to play more than two races, play a Developmental team. A D-team gets only challenges, but that means no minimum number of games. D-teams don't get VP, can't enter the tournament, and can't play any team with 30 VP or more. D-teams need not be appropriately modeled, provided any proxy models involved are usable and seem reasonable to your opponent (similar fantasy football teams are best). This is because the D-league is intended to provide opportunities for coaches to try teams before buying and modeling them.

5) If you concede at the start of the drive with two or fewer players, or in overtime, you get 4 VP. Otherwise, you get no VP for conceding. If you concede, your opponent gets a free TD on a player of his choice. If you concede before the beginning of the second turn of the second half, he gets two TDs on different players. If you concede in overtime, you get no penalties other than losing (and losing the VP you gained for tying the match), but the other team does get the TD. It is considered unsportsmanlike to concede for the purposes of advancing your opponent through MVPs or Winnings. If you really must concede, do it out of desperation.

6) If you cannot play a match (not a challenge) in the calendar month, then you have several options.
a) Request a 7-day extension by notifying the league coordinator.
b) Withdraw by the 15th of the month. Gain 3 VP. Your opponent may take 7 VP, two random MVPs and 2d6x10k in Winnings with the ability to re-roll either or both dice, or may play an additional challenge, his choice.
c) Forfeit. Gain 0 VP. Your opponent may take 7 VP, plus MVPs and Winnings as above, or may play an additional challenge, his choice.
d) Take your opponent's forfeiture if he does not contact you or the coordinator by the end of the month, or if he refuses to play you, as above.

[Darkson]

To complicated for my (and my groups) taste.
If it's what floats your boat though..

[Rhyoth]

5) If you concede at the start of the drive with two or fewer players, or in overtime, you get 4 VP. Otherwise, you get no VP for conceding. If you concede, your opponent gets a free TD on a player of his choice. If you concede before the beginning of the second turn of the second half, he gets two TDs on different players. If you concede in overtime, you get no penalties other than losing (and losing the VP you gained for tying the match), but the other team does get the TD. It is considered unsportsmanlike to concede for the purposes of advancing your opponent through MVPs or Winnings. If you really must concede, do it out of desperation.

0 VP for a concession seems a bit harsh : i would give 2 VP instead. At least, coach conceiding won't have the feeling they came and played for nothing...

[mattgslater]

To complicated for my (and my groups) taste.

That's always my concern: my head wants nitty-gritty, and I always have to remind myself to take a step back. Is there one part that's giving you trouble? Does it make sense?

What I'm trying to reconcile:
1) Postseason tournaments are more fun when the teams involved have mostly developed together.
2) It's sometimes fun to be scheduled against a team you otherwise would have avoided.
3) It's sometimes fun to play way up, but it's a bummer to have to play way up.
4) Some coaches can play more games than others. A couple just want to splash around in the D-league.
5) We've just found the D-league to be a lot of fun, and a good tool for building our coaching skills.
6) We like competing from rookie status, but we also like to bust out our best teams from time to time.
7) We have one clear best coach, so we want more than one top prize.

0 VP for a concession seems a bit harsh : i would give 2 VP instead. At least, coach conceiding won't have the feeling they came and played for nothing...

I was waffling on that, but I think you may be right. The reason I put this in is that scheduled formats with a fixed ceiling on the number of matches introduce a "concession cheese" that I think is anticompetitive. I don't anticipate that it'll become a problem, but having experienced it in the past I want to head it off before it ever comes up. This may just be my amygdala talking....

[mattgslater]

To get into the tournament or to challenge Champions teams, here are the minimum W-T-L records for any given number of games. What this means is that a) even if you really suck you know you can qualify if you put in the work, b) you can play against one or more Champions teams in the final two months, c) winning teams can only go "cherry-picking" in the first two months but bottom-feeders can do it almost up to the end.

7 or fewer games: impossible.
8 games: 6-0-2
9 games: 5-0-4, 4-2-4, 3-5-1
10 games: 3-1-6, 2-4-4
11 games: 2-0-9, 1-3-7
12 games: 1-0-11, 0-2-10
13 games: automatic.

So if you play all your games and do generally poorly, you'll qualify in three months or less. If you're legendarily bad or just bad and miss a game, you'll qualify on the eve of the tournament. If you're good and eager, you should qualify either at the end of month 2 or the beginning of month 3. If you go 6-0, you still have to play two more games before you can go after the Champions.

[mubo]

I didn't understand it on the first readthrough, which probably means it's too complex (for me at least).

Not sure I see the advantages of this ahead of a scheduled league starting with rookie teams, run in conjunction with a Vet's league for developed teams. Which is what we do.

[mattgslater]

That's basically what the Champions League outlined in point #3 is.

[Digger Goreman]

I've had no complaints (knock on a Troll's wooden head) with the structure of our Ladder League, and I believe it addresses the concerns stated....

[Rhyoth]

Bulk ideas :
_ if you use OT in your regular season, give 6 VP instead of 7 for a victory during OT
_ bonus points for winning a "scheduled" match ?

Otherwise, i don't really understand why* your post-season is so "complex" (compared to a classic elimination tournament). Besides, it looks like a good ranking in the regular season is not really rewarded in the post-season.
Personnally, i'd go for a simple elimination tournament :
_ Preliminary round : Teams ranked 5-8 vs Teams ranked 9-12
_ Quarterfinals : winner of the previous round each face one of the top 4 of the regular season
_ Semi-finals
_ Final (and match for the "bronze medal")

* if your concern is to allow even "bad" coaches to play more than one match, continue the tournament in elimination style to determine 5th to 12th rank.

[mattgslater]

That's a good idea about 6 VP for an overtime win.

Regarding the tournament, there's no way I'm actually ever going to have 12 teams. i just want rules for what to do if I can get them, so we can expand without restructuring. Truth be told, if I get six coaches in one place at one time next season, I'd be thrilled beyond measure.

I agree that this format doesn't properly award a high seeding. Certainly, the top-ranked coach can pick his opposition in each round. We kicked around the idea of giving the lower seed the burden of victory, so that regulation ties in the tournament are considered wins for the higher seed. But we decided that it was un-fun, as a team down 2-0 at the half really had nothing to play for. For now, that's not a major issue, but my experience having done this before is that as we expand, our coaching skill variance will contract and we'll need something.

If you're just talking about a bye-round, then I have this fantasy of one day having enough coaches to whittle down to a top eight. The top four would compete for the top two Final Four seeds, while the bottom four compete to avoid elimination. The top losers and bottom winners would then play; the winners of that match would go on to the Final Four. So if you're a top-4 team, you have to win either of two, and if you're a 5-8 team, you have to win both. But that's more detail than I need for now.

@Digger: I'm not a fan of ELO rankings in progression games. If you don't have a massive discrepancy of coaching skills, a winning team with a few games isn't as good as a losing team with a lot of games, and given the number of different matchup variables "who you've beaten" is a more complex question than how good they were. Otherwise, the major differences are that we play tournaments every trimester then everyone resets or graduates at once, and that we have a few scheduled games and a maximum pace. Those differences are kind of deliberate, actually.

[mattgslater]

0 VP for a concession seems a bit harsh : i would give 2 VP instead. At least, coach conceiding won't have the feeling they came and played for nothing...

Ooh. How about this?

If you concede and forfeit your MVP and Winnings in so doing, your opponent gets 7 VP and may award you 4 VP, at his discretion. If you concede in overtime or at the start of the drive with two or fewer available players, you get 4 VP.

So if you're being an ass, he can take your VP away, and you get nothing. But if you're just getting clobbered and decide you're going to lose another guy for sure (about what the Winnings+MVP are worth), you can probably at least get away with credit for losing. Likewise, if OT goes awry right away against a killer team, you can just throw up your hands at the start of the turn and say "okay, you got me," and it's just like a regulation loss. 'Course, if you're playing OT against a killer team, you must really need the point. Is this an argument for making an OT win 7 points? I want people to think they're passing something up when they take the tie, because that's the default, and taking the default should feel "right" less than half the time, even if you want it to happen most of the time. That's why an OT loss is worth a tie; you should never have to sacrifice VP to play voluntary OT.

[Rhyoth]

0 VP for a concession seems a bit harsh : i would give 2 VP instead. At least, coach conceiding won't have the feeling they came and played for nothing...

Ooh. How about this?

If you concede and forfeit your MVP and Winnings in so doing, your opponent gets 7 VP and may award you 4 VP, at his discretion. If you concede in overtime or at the start of the drive with two or fewer available players, you get 4 VP.

So if you're being an ass, he can take your VP away, and you get nothing. But if you're just getting clobbered and decide you're going to lose another guy for sure (about what the Winnings+MVP are worth), you can probably at least get away with credit for losing(...)

When making a rule, do not, ever, trust human nature/judgement : this is the best way to see some controversial situations like :
_ according VP to your opponent just because it's a good friend
_ denying VP to your opponent just for the pleasure of screwing him ...

Personnaly, with such a rule, i would be some kind of nasty guy, like : "if you concede before turn 12, you won't get your VP, so you ONLY have 7 turn left to suffer with your 6 poor linerats... " (and i know a couple of vicious coaches, which could have the same speach, but could still deny VP for their opponent, even if he DO wait turn 12 before conceding...)

My advice : prefer a simple but solid rule.

[mattgslater]

Yeah, you're probably right.

Hmmm... how's this?

If you concede in regulation, you get 1 VP if you get to halftime, plus 1 VP if you suffer any deaths or cut any players. So you get 1-2 VP if you show up, get rocked, concede and go home, or no VP if you show up and walk away. But if you stick it out to the end, you get 4 VP, or more if you find a way to pull it out.

[Rhyoth]

I'm fine with that (and i also like the "fight-at-least-till-halftime" spirit)

[plasmoid]

WDIT?
I think you need your own forum section