In case of a draw, how is head to head record calculated? You look at the number or wins or the number of points (between clans in question)?

It's based on the number of wins, not points. Sorry for the ambiguity. The Rules tab of the CL doc has been updated to reflect this.

I think there is a much easier solution, but it would need a larger change.

Get rid of the two-stage procedure all together and simply make one huge pool of clans who play all templates, like Division A and B, with the top 2 advancing.

The only difference (with A and B) would be that clans do not play every other clan on every template. If all clans play 6 games on every template (2 times 3v3, 3 times 2v2, 6 times 1v1), that's 66 games in total, like A and B, and will likely be enough to pit every clan against every other clan at least twice, but more likely (depending on the number of clans) three to four times in total. It should be relatively easy to balance all of this with a smart sampling scheme.

Main counter argument: some clans may play stronger opponents more often than others. But, let's be honest: Division Q3. It's still better.

Edited 5/2/2017 17:32:33

@Math Wolf, that is definitely something we will consider when we sit down and figure out what we want to change for CL10.

Second counter argument: clans waiting with finishing their games so that they pick opponents they want (=clans that don't have allocated games).

You'd need to find a way to prevent this.

@Rento, scheduled games (either with scheduled opponents or with randomly determined opponents) would solve that.

Edited 5/2/2017 18:21:26

I understand that, but that is something clans would have to decide when creating lineups: playing their best players as much as possible, or keeping them from getting overwhelmed with games. It may be in their interest not to max players out.

I'm pretty sure i'm not the only one playing 3 or others 2 tournaments who simply can't play more than that and who probably need to reduce their participation to 2 or 1 tournaments, with that change. That will cause new problems. U will need more players in the lineup. More players means automatically, that u have a higher chance of players taking vacations and more players also means a higher risk of getting booted. Therefore u might need to increase the subsitutions not only to 8, but maybe even to a higher number. So that 1 change could possibly lead to many more problems/changes, which aren't very good either.

I agree, and that is one drawback, but it will impact slow teams much more than it will affect their opponents. If you have a means of targeting only the slow team, we're happy to hear it.

Well u have a 3 day boot time for a reason. Why should u punish slow teams anyways? I see no sense in that. Try to work on reducing vacations, than pushing teams to play faster.

And i also see another problem with that. U definitely get punished as an opponent, even if u're not responsible for the delay. That also means u will have a time were u play 3 games at once. Obviously u play slower with 3 games at the same time, as u would with playing 2 games, so u could get into a cycle, in which u will stay on 3 games at once or maybe even can't handle that and go to 4 games at once. F.ex. also if your own teammate takes a vacation of 1 to 2 weeks. One longer vacation of your opponent especially at the beginning of the season can impact u for weeks and maybe even months.

From my point of view it's like the highest principle of law: An innocent person should never be punished for a crime, that he had nothing to do with.

That's not true. 2 day boots will lead to players forgetting that the boot is sooner and getting booted. This will either encourage them to play quicker, or it will result in more games at a time, which will no doubt reduce their play quality, but shouldn't really induce more boots.

At the end of the day, it is in the interest of the competition for the different divisions to proceed at roughly the same pace. It's no fun for the clans in Q1 and Q2 to wait for so long for the result in Q3 to become clear. Similarly, B will finish the whole season not too long after C and D start at this rate. The simplest way to handle this is by

I used that more as an example to explain, that u have to play your turns faster, so rather in 2 days than exhausting the 3-day boot time. I also don't think u can compare Divison A + B with the Qualifier Stages. At least not in cases of tournament numbers. U have way more people playing to their limits in A and B, than in the qualifier stages, due to the concept of it. And ofc u have a higher quality level in A and B and as an example also in this year Q3 than in Q1 or 2 so it's just logical that these divisions/groups take longer.

Wait one season and u should see, that with the current system the Qualifier groups should be more weighted in terms of quality, which should result in closer end dates for each qualifier group.


In the end i rather like to have a slower Clan League, in which everybody has the possibility to participate without investing to much free time to the competition, than having a Clan League that forces u to play fast and punishes u if u're playing slow, even if u're not responsible for it.

U should try to reducing the length of a season by reducing vacations or limit vacations on a certain number of days. With that change and a more weighted qualifier stage the problem might solve at least to a certain ammount to itself. Probably not completely, but at least to a certain amount, where u're not forced to make these drastic changes.

@Edge,
I know opinion is going to be divided on this issue. Like I said, we haven't worked out the details yet. Once we do, we can revisit the conversation. We have other plans to handle the vacation problem as well. So the issue of getting punished for someone else holding your games up will be reduced in my opinion.

At any rate, you can rest assured that we will think this through before proposing radical changes. Both of us are well aware of all the issues you raise, as we face them every season in the CL ourselves :)

Ofc. Take your time with it to present a good plan and then we can talk again. Maybe u can convince me.

Second counter argument: clans waiting with finishing their games so that they pick opponents they want (=clans that don't have allocated games).

You'd need to find a way to prevent this.

The idea would be to set the match-ups in advance of course, otherwise you can't guarantee a balanced schedule for all clans.

Example of a fully balanced example with 5 clans (V,W,X,Y,Z), 4 tournaments and 2 games per tournament:

3v3: V-W, X-Y, Z-V, W-X, Y-Z
2v2: V-X, Z-W, Y-V, X-Z, W-Y
1v1: V-W, Y-Z, X-V, W-Y, Z-X
1v1: V-Y, W-Z, X-W, Y-X, Z-V

The draw would simply be to determine which clan gets which slot. By first making the match-ups using generic letters and only then filling in the clans, there can't be any favouritism.

(Minor disadvantage: I'm not sure if there are actually algorithms to determine these kind of things, I'm generally pretty good at doing it manually myself, but it obviously gets trickier (and more work) for a larger number of clans.)

Right now players have an incentive to play slow (so to get more intel on your opponents from their other games, give less intel to your opponents), but that just sucks.

Second counter argument: clans waiting with finishing their games so that they pick opponents they want (=clans that don't have allocated games).

You'd need to find a way to prevent this.

Does everyone feel the same way about these comments? I've never really bothered about timing my games so as to "give lesser intel" or pick opponents. If someone cared enough, I'm sure they can find about 100 games of mine on 3v3 EU or enough games on the other templates I play. I feel like you guys are overthinking it here. The speed of play is probably just related to people being busy with life. If this is a concern among the majority of players, then we'll see if it can be addressed.

Although all ideas are welcome, we'll have to take a call on what we can invest time and effort into. All of this has to be coded into the CLOT and we have a lot of other pressing issues which we need to address as well.

Like I said, our plan was to get into this discussion after Group C/D1/D2 begins, as the organizer workload reduces significantly after that.

Edited 5/2/2017 21:53:33

Pointing out things that may not work is probably my professional habit. It's not that I like being negative or I want to give you more work. It's because I want to help, believe me :)

If the idea is to have a big pool of clans, with clans like let's say Olympus and 7th Heaven together, and matchmaking would be made by simply matching together clans with not enough games at the moment, that would mean you can pick opponents by checking which clans lack games. I can't believe that no clan would abuse that when it's such a simple and easy way to gain an advantage, and not a small one.

If you go for such system, scheduled games like hinted by Beren and Math Wolf are a must imo.

Pointing out things that may not work is probably my professional habit.

Are you a statistician as well? ;-)

I agree 100% with Rento. People will try to get favorable match-ups in such a system just like people do on the ladders often, unless there is no way to see what games are finished and hence no way to know what opponent you'll get next. I also feel that some people that are slow might be being slow (in tournaments) to gain intel on the picking habits of their next opponents. In an ideal world, no one could see finished games of a same tournament but that's unfortunately not really possible.

3 days boot is a must. People usually assume all standard tourneys and ladders are 3 days boot. People will get booted at 2 days imo and we have already too much boots in Clan League. Maybe to speed up the process you could put 3 games at once instead of 2 and if some players can't do it because they feel it is too much, they could let their place to someone else. I know a lot of us that have like over 20 MD games so 20 vs 21 is not a big deal imo. If you play 3 tournaments with 2 games at once, you should be able to play 2 tournaments with 3 games each at once.

Edited 5/2/2017 23:05:01

I have two arguments for the way things are done.

1. In defense of the value of the three day boot:

Day 1: Strategy Discussion Open
Day 2: Strategy Discussion Closes, Moves are Finalized
Day 3: Full 24 hours to commit orders so no one gets booted

There are a lot of variation in work schedules and time zones within a lot of clans. I believe the time allows people with different schedules to work on a fully formed “team” strategy as opposed to single players on a team just making gut moves without consideration for the team strategy.






2. A proposal to solve the seeding complaints and the unfairness in the current system, while reducing the completion time and total number of games, yet increasing the certainty of the results through improved accuracy:

In terms of accuracy of seeding the second round, full round robin has the highest accuracy in sorting out clan rank, but it also has the lowest speed. The highest speed would go to single elimination to sort out the best clan, but it has the least accuracy. Double elimination is probably the best compromise between speed and accuracy.

The difference between Hydra and ACME is one game and the difference between Corp and LuFredd is one game. The difference between whoever wins Q3's second slot is likely to be one game. From looking at the current scores, I don't see a significant difference in skill among about seven clans.

Could you forgo a two leveled seeded round robin in favor of double elimination templates that assign points to the top 2 of each template? It would eliminate the need for two stages thus reducing time in half, reduce the total number of games by about 50% while giving each template adequate respect for its unique strategy, every clan has the potential to compete against every other clan, and I believe double elimination is a good indicator of who the top two clans are for a specific template, because it allows for one loss.

For the 11 templates, every clan would have an equal opportunity to win a spot in the top 2. No one has to worry about whether they should use their star player slots in the first round or the second round. Since a player is allowed three slots, they can play in a max of three games at a time. The total of number of games would be significantly reduced because if you lose two games on any template you are out of the double elimination or you got second place. You can weight the 1st, 2nd places, 1v1,2v2,3v3 as may be appropriate.




Tldnr;

Less time, No seeding, every clan equal opportunity, improved distinction among clans, reduced luck, less work administratively, fewer games need to be played for better results than current system.



Edit: Also eliminates the value of delaying for intel gathering, because you will have the same number of games to look at as your opponent will of yours.

Edited 5/3/2017 04:18:40

Surrenders are occurring in the Apprentice Vs TJC game. Not sure how that effects overall potential placings but can't be good for Apprentice chances.

I'm pretty sure i'm not the only one playing 3 or others 2 tournaments who simply can't play more than that and who probably need to reduce their participation to 2 or 1 tournaments, with that change. That will cause new problems. U will need more players in the lineup. More players means automatically, that u have a higher chance of players taking vacations and more players also means a higher risk of getting booted. Therefore u might need to increase the subsitutions not only to 8, but maybe even to a higher number. So that 1 change could possibly lead to many more problems/changes, which aren't very good either.

Eh, these WL players nowadays. Smileyleg played like 7 tournaments in CL7 and didn't complain!

Oh, and hello div C! :) :)

Was Smileyleg the bar for an average active player in CL during that time? I'm probably more active than the average CL player, so i only described a scenario about my concerns and possible results for an average active CL player.

You also can't just take a simple number of tournaments someone plays in. Was the majority 1vs1 tournaments? Was it team games? If it where team games how time intense was the communication? Especially the last thing is stuff only Smileyleg and his possible teammates will be able to give an answer.

Btw was it really possible to play as a single player in 7 tournaments in CL? I doubt that. 7 games sounds more accurate, through that would also means it was possible to play 3 games at once in CL 7?

Edit: In the end we need to wait how the changes will look like. After talking with MotD i'm more optimistic about it.

Edited 5/4/2017 04:32:45

The possible scenario's
(There are 16 possible outcomes left, some of those lead to the same top 2. The number of possible scenario's are indicated between brackets.)

• (6) Stats win against Apprentice, 101st doesn't win both remaining games
  -> TJC & Stats advance
  
• (4) Apprentice wins against 101st & Stats
  -> TJC & Apprentice advance
  
• (3) 101st and Stats win out, TJC wins against DWF
  OR Apprentice wins against Stats, 101st wins against Apprentice, TJC wins against 101st
  -> TJC advances, tie for 2nd between 101st and Stats (101st has tiebreaker)
  
• (2) 101st wins out, Apprentice wins against Stats
  -> TJC & 101st advance
  
• (1) 101st and Stats win out, TJC loses against DWF
  -> 3 way tie for first between TJC, Stats, 101st (complicated)
  

Number of scenario's in which each team advances:
TJC: 15 (+ 3-way tie for 1st)
Stats: 6 (+ 3-way tie for 1st)
101st: 5 (+ 3-way tie for 1st)
Apprentice: 4

Number of scenario's resulting in a tie is now 4/16 (3 of those involve 2-way tie between 101st and Stats, which would be won by 101st), it's not clear to me how the 3-way tie for first would be resolved.

Thanks for doing all the break down MW, getting really exciting in the last few games, at least Juggernauts can feel a little more relaxed in watching it now :)

Best of luck to everyone in their last few games of Q3 !!

Just 101st Vs Apprentice and Apprentice Vs Stats left!

(Technically DWF Vs TJC is a game but it has no effect on division and one player hasn't been seen for 5+ days)