When you're trying to play a game and get a surprise lesson about earthquakes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FjWe31S_0g

@Mike, I was really waiting for the Farah post to get into the discussion, thanks! Let me give you the short summary and you tell me about the poaching/approaching part. AI rigged the 1v1 ladder by playing with 2 accounts (Niklas Reissmann) and he played/surrendered against himself too (there were some stalling too); then M'H refused to do something about him. So Farah left M'H and got into tryouts with Master clan.

To help get this thread back on topic, lets use this thread for future poaching related discussion. I believe we do have a quite of bit yet to discuss here, so its a good idea to get this off this thread.

https://www.warlight.net/Forum/265556-warlight-poaching-discussion

Edited 6/10/2017 02:22:05

Re the subject of vacations, I agree that a set vacation limit should be established. Of course, RL always comes first, but I don't buy into any excuse that tries to justify 40+ day chained vacations. 99% of the time it's just players who don't want to play WL and probably shouldn't have volunteered to be in CL in the first place.

How do the templates get decided? Is is still the division A clans which vote on them?

Templates get suggested and a panel sorts out the bad ones. Then the A and B clans vote just as it was on the ongoing season

Edited 6/10/2017 10:33:37

Games being decided by non-joins

Default wins do not only penalize the player who doesn't join, but all the other players involved in the game too, since they lose an opportunity to play a competitive game. Replacing the player with an AI is not a solution, playing with or against an AI is no fun.

If a game doesn't start, it should be recreated with a one week delay. The clan leader of the player who didn't join can decide if he wants to use him again or replace him with someone else.
A 1-pt or 2-pts penalty can be given to the clan of the player who didn't join in time.

More player level breakdown of stats needed

It would be cool, but I don't think it is a priority.

One thing that could easily be done though, is have the players' names appear on the Filtered Games tab of the google sheet, next to the teams. Then with a Ctrl+F, we could easily check who played what without having to open games.

Substitutions require manual work to be done by the league organizers

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that any attempt to code and automate this would require more work than simply doing the manual substitutions.

Alts and multi-clan membership is a growing problem.

I think the current rules are fine and should not be changed.
-> a player needs to be in the clan he plays for at the start of the season
-> a player playing for Clan A on CL8 and Clan B on CL9 cannot play for Clan A again on CL10
That's it, let's not overthink this with complicated rules.

For an outsider, there is no way to judge if a player is really part of the team he represents during CL or if he's just a mercenary. The level of their account doesn't mean anything. We simply have to trust that the clan leaders will do the right thing and pick the right players.

Lack of a clear schedule
Clan league takes too long, and specifically is much slower in some divisions than others
Clan league is stalled by players taking vacations in excess of 40 days

I like the idea of scheduled games that was suggested by other people. As soon as the templates are chosen, a complete schedule of the league can be decided, tournament by tournament.
The clan leaders can then consider the dates of each tournament before they select their roster. If a player has exams in December and is likely to take a vacation, then his clan leader should field him for a tournament that'll start in January, and not one that'll start in December.
If despite this, a player doesn't join a created game in 3 days because he's on vacation, then he has to be replaced. (And if the clan organizers weren't notified beforehand, then his team gets a 1pt or a 2pt penalty.)

Templates

I don't think we should stay with the STV system for CL10. Volanco Island in, Battle Islands and French Brawl out... when you looked at the ratings those templates got, this result was just weird.
I'd rather use a more classic system. Perhaps once everyone ranks the templates, we could simply select them according to the median? Or according to the mean, after we ignore the smallest and largest ranks?

Also, I think we should make sure we don't play the same templates every season. Change is good.
For example, we could allow only one 3v3 template ma, one 2v2 template and two 1v1 templates maximum to return for CL10.
Or we could decide that a template cannot be used more than two CL seasons in a row.

I am strongly against replaying games in which a player didn't manage to join in time. Every solution i saw here would mean extra work for the cl runners. There is NO reason why someone would be unable to join in time. If you can't play warlight, use a vacation.

Take the 2 seconds time and join the damn game. Clan leaders better don't gamble with players which are good but liabilities. If they decide to gamble, their own fault.

by adding an incentive to all players staying in their clan. The most motivated to leave for another clan still can, and still can play CL, only they would have to be benched for a whole season, in order to be recorded in the roster, so they can be lined up the season after (in my suggestion).

Just had a short though about what you said here and if a player needs to be benched for 1 full season you would have to keep that player happy for another 6 months or so before they can even play for your clan.

Take me for example. I just left Blitz like most of the other 'active' players. Your suggestion would mean noone of us would be allowed to play in CL10 because we are on the roster of another clan. This is just outrageous if my opinion since this is the actually the 1st time i'll be switching clans since i joined Warlight almost 5 years ago by now. Played CL for Blitz since season 5 and have been in the line-up all of the seasons except the currently ongoing season since i'm busy with school.

Your way of thinking would mean i have to be 1 of the possibly 10 benched players for a clan on season 10 so i can play for them on season 11 which will start by februari (having a positive view on the speed of CL with that estimation). I really don't like the idea of that just because we as Blitz decided to basically split up and everyone is free to go where they want to go to.

I am strongly against replaying games in which a player didn't manage to join in time. Every solution i saw here would mean extra work for the cl runners. There is NO reason why someone would be unable to join in time. If you can't play warlight, use a vacation.

Take the 2 seconds time and join the damn game. Clan leaders better don't gamble with players which are good but liabilities. If they decide to gamble, their own fault.

I agree that there is no excuse for a player who doesn't join a game in time.
This season, some players didn't know about some of the rules, like the necessity to join their games as soon as their vacation ended. Or the fact that rather than be replaced with an AI, the game would be deleted.
But next season, I agree, there will be no excuse. And yes, it is only fair that the players who don't respect the rules and the teams that field those players get punished.

However when you don't replay the games, you do not only punish the player at fault, you also punish the other players. I'd like to avoid that.

Take the GG non-joins on 3v3 Deadman's Rome this season for example. Their games against MH, VS, BIA and VIW were deleted.
So on four different games, one player didn't join in time and that caused the other five players to lose their opportunity to play a competitive team game. (Which is what CL is all about in my opinion.) Sure, the other teams got the free wins, but I don't think they felt so great about it.

Also, these default wins could have impacted the promotion or the relegation, since not everyone got a free win against the best clan of the league. For example, SNinja could have suffered from the situation since our direct opponents for relegation, BIA and VIW, got 5 points they probably wouldn't have gotten without the non-joins.

I know this situation already exists with boots during the games, as they can help some teams and have an unfair impact on others. But while we cannot do anything about boots when the games already started, we can recreate the games with non-joins and make everyone happy. (Well, everyone except the CL runners I guess. :/)

That's why I think we should allow the games to be replayed, and only give a point penalty to the team of the player that didn't join. This way, only the guilty party gets punished.

Edited 6/10/2017 14:47:24

I got another idea for a potential change in CL 10.

In every sport league it's the case that a dropped out team will be replaced by the best of the relegated teams. Just here it comes into play, that the relegated teams still relegate, while the 3th and sometimes even 4th place of the lower league will promote instead.

Before this season Apex dropped out of CL. They would have played in A, so One got promoted into Division A instead, while GG as the best of the 2 relegated Clans needed to go down.

First of all One did a great job and showed, that they belong to A, but One was just 1 point ahead of VIW last season in Division B. Do u think it would have been a great idea to relegate GG and promote VIW because Apex dropped out?

I think it would be actually better, if CL gets more leaned towards real sport leagues in that regard and therefor replace dropped out Clans with the best relegated clans, than replace them with the 3th/4th placed team of the lower division.

Edited 6/10/2017 14:43:08

@ waka

Well no, because my suggestion only applies if former clan still participates in CL. If a clan doesnt, and its members join other clans, in my suggestion, they can play CL with their new clan.

The underlying idea of the suggestion is to *kind of* "penalyse" players who jump from a clan to another one, likely a stronger or more famous one. Basically the change of clan would have to be more motivated due to such a constraint to handle. And isnt this what we want ? Loyal players to their clan, and if they do change, they think of it carefully beforehand, and don't plan to jump to clans every so and then ? Well, this is not what CL is supposed to be about, but if this is something community agrees on, only CL can help achieve this. But right now, I seem to be alone, so this will probably be my last post on the subject.

Also, this was originally to answer one of the Alts issue. Clan benefiting from a one shot bunch of alts that will not return the season after, this is quite unfair competition for other clans, and the clan will suffer the season after if he artificially promoted thanks to alts. Such rule may make Alts think twice before helping out a clan for a one shot season.

Edited 6/10/2017 14:47:08

I agree with rakleader that boots affect more players than just the booted ones, so I'll post my suggestion again (since the thread got derailed quickly after that).

Let's not look at boots as a punishment only for the booted team. It affects the whole division. When someone boots against clan X and then wins against Y, it renders the competition unfair and less interesting.

Therefore, if there's a possibility to reduce the number of boots, it should be used. I think adding banked boot times of 1 day to games would be a good move. Or maybe even less, like 12 hours. Not 5 days, that's ridiculous. Autoboot stays at 3 so you have to play your turns in same pace as before and banked boot acts like a very limited life saver. And doesn't require coding in clot.

About non-joins though, they do suck, but really there's no excuse for not joining in time. It will be especially true next season, as people should learn their lessons. Redoing games has to be done manually by the panel (or only MotD?) and they have hands full of work already.

Edited 6/10/2017 14:56:05

@Rento,
Rest assured that we will note down all reasonable suggestions and discuss them regardless of how much the thread is derailed. Even hearts and earthquakes cannot stop us!

I was drinking last night... Long story short.. I passed Geography when I should've failed. I now know where earthquakes come from and well hearts? Well that came from when I thought I failed Biology and I did actually well. (There may have been a heart question on it)

Your sober post made less sense than your drunken post :P

Fuck sake.. I can't win sober or drunk..

Since most issues that are currently driving the bulk of clan league have been discussed in this thread I do have some ideas for making Divisions C, D1, and D2 more enjoyable

More rewards for making it to C

Right now if you make it to C the only prize you get is a chance to make it to B and a better seed for next CL's qualifiers, so if you work your butt off and get third that's not much of a prize imo. I don't like the idea of only A and B getting to decide which templates to use each clan league and would prefer that the lower clans get a say or an opportunity to get a say, so why not allow clans that qualified to C the previous clan league the ability to vote for templates as a prize for making that far and a way for the lower clans to get a say in what templates are used?

Make D1 and D2 less boring

I think the format for the seeding of D1 and D2 should make for more competitive divisions. Just like the top 2 clans from the Qs get to play in C, I think the clans that finish 3rd/4th should be put in D1 and 5th/6th in D2. Why? Because as it is you are creating extremely boring divisions that have only a couple clans fighting for 1st in those divisions.

I think

D1 			D2

ACME			FBG
Poon Squad		Olympus
CORP			German Warlords
Preußen Garde		Dutch [NL]
101st			HAWKS
Apprentice		DWF

is more interesting than what we currently have at least in one of the divisions.

This would also make incentives greater to get into D1 since they would be fighting for the higher seed next clan league and would have tougher competition to keep them busy while A, B, and C continue on.

Alts and multi-clan membership is a growing problem.

I think best decision is a rule: no consecutive CL seasons for different clans or with different alts.

CL should strengthen clan system, and people running around through different clans are ruining it. The best example is Blitz. They have very good players, but after unsuccessful CL9 in league A, some players are leaving Blitz. So even though Blitz demotes, CL10 same player from Blitz will fight for MH or GG or any other A leagues clan? Then what is the point in promotion or relegation? It think for any player who participated in CL season, next season can be only in the same clan or in a new clan in qualification division.

That's way too harsh. If a Clan picks a player up and fields him for A then he's obviously good enough. No need for a explicit rule.