OK, what I'm about to suggest here is a bit controversial and I know that many people won't agree, but what the hell.

One thing I've always like about league systems in soccer is that (in most countries), the winner of the league is the team that finishes first. Not 2nd, 3rd, 6th or whatever. 1st. They were the most consistent team and performed the best over the course of the season.

However, some sports (especially those in the US) and QW tend to use a playoff system at the end of the regular season to decide the winner. This means that the eventual winner could of finished far below the team with the most points, losing many more games. Personally I don't think this is right, as in my mind the whole purpose of a league system is to determine who the best team is over an extended period of time - like I said earlier, who is the most consistent, not who just happened to be on top of their game for a given couple of matches.

In terms of QW, what this means is that you will often see the elite clans 'cruising' through the regular season. They know that losing to a rival doesn't really matter that much, cos they will still have far to much for the weaker clans in their div. All they need to do is get a place in the playoffs and then step up their game from there. Personally I think this makes the regular season less interesting, and in fact often you will see top clans not playing all their matches, because they don't need to in order to qualify.

The biggest argument I can see in favour of playoffs in QW is that they provide a really exciting finale to the season, with the top clans battling it out directly against one another. Those are the type of games which get the most coverage in terms of reporting, specs, demos etc. I know this from commentating on many tournament playoffs in the past with the buzz that goes around on qizmos and hundreds on teamspeak. The fans sure love the playoffs.

What I would say in response to this, is that our quake season is too heavily weighted in that direction. By which I mean we have maybe 3 months of a fairly boring regular season and then 1-2 months of intense playoffs. Surely it would be better to keep things exciting all the time? By getting rid of playoffs, I think we could achieve this. Why? Simple. If there are no playoffs, then every game matters. Effectively EVERY game almost becomes a playoff game and I think we would see regular season games being taken a lot more seriously by both clans and specs if we knew that they could decide where the title goes.

Of course, another argument in favour of Playoffs is that in some ways it keeps the regular season interesting for the 'average' clans for longer - i.e. they still have something to play for, making the playoffs, even if they can't place 1st in the league. This is perhaps one argument I can't make a case against.

However, what I'd suggest is that we should introduce a cup system in addition to the league (involving teams from all divs). So you still get knockout matches, just they don't take place as part of the league system (in relation to English soccer, this would be the FA Cup rather than Premier League). This system is similar to what used to be used in the UK many years ago with the UKCL and UKCL Cup.

Amen.

Every qw 4on4 tournament and cup that i have played, that did not split the teams in atleast 3 different divs depending on skill, SUCKED. Sucked badly infact. Very boring games for both teams. Please dont do this. Smackdown sucked every time i played in it. QHlan 4on4 was equaly bad if not worse.

I dunno about playoffs. Sure makes season more interesting and some teams that are inactive might finnish another few games if they got something to play for. Whichever way we go, we need atleast a final between div1 #1 and div1 #2 in the end of the season. Skip semis.

as a simple spectator i can say that i only care about semi's and the final
so.. playoffs steal the show of the whole season

I really like what HangTime proposed here, this means more attention to every game played thoughout the season. Maby this will give the admins, commentators more job, but I actually think this will be better for the community. It feels like we are having a few news faces "rookies" arount the scene, and this is a good way of showing off our great and somewhat special community. I give thumbs up for HangTime and for more commentated games through the whole season.

Well, i don't know if you're gone senile or something but i think this is kind of what we tried to do in EQL Season 2. We then had playoff for division 1 (which is ok imo) and then relegation/promotion games for the rest of the divisions - just like you would think a league would work. This wasn't ok with a lot of clans though who desperately wanted a playoff in all divisions for some reason, which is kinda pointless imo.

A league system with divisions without playoffs, and then a proper Smackdown style CUP at the side without any seeding what so ever would be nice imo.

Promotion/Relegation is a whole different issue

The main reason it doesn't work, IMO, is that QW clans are by and large fairly short lived. It's not like sport where there are big barriers (cost, venues, regulations etc) to setting up a new team - you can do it in 5mins. So the list of teams in a league is NEVER the same from one season to the next, there are always some clans dying out and some new ones being formed.

In the past I've heard people say you could make players a bit more 'respectful' towards the concept of clans/leagues by saying that new clans must always start at the bottom. So lets say Slackers and CMF disbanded and some new team appeared mixing their players. They would have to start in div6 or whatever the lowest is. The idea is that this would discourage 'short term' clans because you would miss several seasons of playing in the top div.

The problem of course is that genuine low-skill players may not be too happy at having div0/1 elites playing in their div. You could have a stupid situation where a good newbie clan was NEVER able to get promoted, because the top spots are always taken pros playing in a new team. Furthermore it would probably just mean less competition in div1, because players would not want to have to drop to a div6 clan, they will simply join an existing div1 clan. So you get more and more concentration of talent until very few elite clans remain with lots of superstars in each.

Basically due to the instability of QW clans we have no option but to re-evaluate where teams should be placed each season. In an ideal world we could have a fluid league system where promotion and relegation works, but I just can't see it working.

Moving back on topic, one possible benefit from removing playoffs might be that we could (possibly) play 4 seasons a year instead of 2, depending on division sizes.

I know that promotion/relegation isn't so successful in Quakeworld and that's why i don't like it. Maybe people would've been more active during the regular season and whine less if those promotion games weren't there - as not all clans want to advance in the Quakeworld tiers.

Your suggestion on having four seasons a year sounds very bad to me. In EQL we've had roughly three seasons between ~2006-2007 and we all know how the clans respect the league after it have run the whole years. I think it damages the status of the league if we have 4 winners a year. If you ask me we actually need FEWER 4on4 leagues/seasons so they regain their prestige. :}

Well you might get what you wish for as NQR has been having kinda hard time.

Hello HangTime! didnt know you are back..? huh. Well anyway idea of making every game count sounds good to me. You made your case on that, no need for me to dig it up any further. On the other hand i also have that much of "good old playoff spirit" in me that i would like to see some kind of playoff style happening, maybe even totally separated from the actual league. Even 16/32/64 double-elimination bracket "quick cup" between the seasons would do the trick for me

And ye i guess we cant go and remove divisions too just like that, given though to the situation we are in now. Way2many ppl would get upset.

would be nice to have a Eueropean Quake Cup besides EQL.. so we can copy the football system: UEFA Cup, Champions League.. the winners play in the UEFA SuperCup

isnt that what smackdown is for?

i agree with willigrytan that cups suck ass
ok if u get to meet +-1 division teams, but as a div3 team to meet div1 ad div5... rape in one hand and the cock in the other... pure bs

and keep playoffs, maybe introduce a penalty system for the team that caused a groupgame to not be played, this could be hard to do i know since teams tend to blame eachother but it would be nicer if all teams played all their games and then went into playoffs
a team who refuses or delays a game up to a point where it cant be played before playoffs should get -1 point or something

i agree with hooraytio!

The thing is that as we currently have it, the playoffs are USELESS. But i guess it doesn't matter as we can't have proper promotion/relegation anyway - which is why the league system is obsolete in a way.


*was

What the fuck, i think sassa is living in 2005 or something

It ain't that easy. You can't just compare regular sport to QW because of MANY reasons. People play QW for fun and competition like in other sports but they play it in their spare time and there is no money involved.

Since QW is state of mind and 'just' hobby you can't expect people to be constantly active during every season, every month. With current system (league + playoffs) it's just easier for clan leaders to plan games ahead. I take 5-7 people to clan per season to be sure I can 'always' get 4 players per every game. Maybe not best 4 - perhaps we would lose some games bacause of that - but at least I know that I can afford losing several games and still have a chance to get into playoff zone and win the whole thing. Less experienced players can get their chance in less important games during the season. More experienced players but less active can go away for 2 months and return for final games and playoffs. In general everybody's got fun cause they know not every game is essential to win, they know they can make mistakes, check different lineups, homemaps, etc.

Of course if clan gets double crown (winning groupstage + playoffs) it's fun, especially in div1. But you have to remember that for many lower div clans advancing div higher is not a reward but a punishment. Even if they won lower div it doesn't mean they were best there. They just might happen to be most active team or with best lineup during the season but in the next season they can get worse lineup, less active (low morale affects activity) and even though they wouldn't even finish top4 in lower div they are gonna be raped in higher div because they won group stage, even if they lost playoffs. That's the real problem IMO.

Group stage usually starts after long period of holiday/break so people are usually not in shape and they get to it throu whole season. It would be bad if those first games could decide about the outcome of whole div, lets say there are two big favorites in the div and the random schedule said they have to play their group game in the beginning. Team A pracced whole summer, team B just returned from holiday and hasn't seen a mouse for 3 months. Solution: playoffs or scheduling (and forcing!) those teams for last game of the group stage. But that would work only if all teams were same active cause if team A before that last game is 1st and team B 4th with 10 points less and only half games played it doesn't change anything and the game is for nothing (besides pride).

That makes playoffs so important - it's always game for something and it's always game when both teams had whole season to get into shape. Also it's always best of 5 which is so much more amusing than best of 3 and can bring much more drama. BO5 also can change result of whole div outcome - just look at last div2 season, SR2 won vs D2 in groupstage, yet D2 won groupstage and we met again in the playoff final. We were losing 0:2 in the final and had in memory losing 1:2 in the groupstage yet we were able to win it 3:2. If there was no playoffs we wouldn't be able to prove ourselves that we won groupstage only because SR2 weren't as active as we were.

If there was enough teams to make 2 divX (top1Avstop2B/top2Avstop1B playoff style) it would be best. But there is not enough teams and dividing teams in only 3 divs ain't very good idea (last NQR for example - GOLD was really boring for all no div1 teams).

I think promotion/relegation isn't in HangTime's plans at all as promotion/relegation sucks in Quakeworld. So the topic is kinda about a league with ~five divisions with clans that get seeded after every season and there are no promotion/relegation/playoff games played at all. Feel free to confirm if this is kind of what you were thinking HangTime.

It doesn't change anything .

It could also be bad if games at the end of the season (playoffs) decided the outcome of a whole div! I understand what you are saying (that in early weeks of season, maybe some clans aren't at full potential), but the same can apply towards the end of season. Sometimes you get clans really active towards the start and tailing off towards the end (e.g. maybe some players gotta study hard for exams at end of semester, or are on holiday or whatever).

One solution I've thought about in the past is that by getting rid of playoffs, clans could play each other twice due to having more time for the regular season. This would help to remove 'luck' from the equation as you would get 2 chances vs each team. However I remember a lot of people thought that would be kinda boring.

Anyway this whole topic was just some idea I thought about throwing out there for discussion. It's 15 months since I played any 4on4 so I'm not going to push it too strongly.

Home and away game vs each clan?
Time for some great ping advantages!

And CMF went undefeated through NQR5 groupgames just to lose vs DISORDER in semi!! (Thanks You, BYE BYE)

that home and away thing actually sounds kinda interesting, even though it would probably just piss people off

Home/away games would probably just make people play both home and away game on the same evening? It would also be utterly boring in the matches where the outcome is almost certain. While we get more of the good stuff, we would get more of the bad stuff aswell and Willgurht would bring forth the rope for us.

best of five instead playoffs ?

we used to have "home/away" games before someone decided we should only play TB3. back then, quakeworld was really fun. not so much with TB3.

i dont think every match would be any more interesting as they already are by getting rid of playoffs - or at least not anywhere near as interesting as the playoffs.

the reason for this is simply the knockout system. it makes the game far more interesting when the winning team will advance to next round and the losing team must wait for the next season.

and i also think there is less chance of an average team winning against a top clan from the division, or the favorite in quake. this would lead to the possibility when one clan beats one or two of the other possible favourites, you would be almost certain that it would win - and already when the season is only half played.

and as for the cup i dont think it would be as interesting as the long-waited finals after a season.. though i dont know the concept might work in reality just not in my head.

if i have shitty candy and good candy, i'll eat the shitty candy first so i'm left with the good candy in the end. i wouldn't mix them into one neutral tasting candy. and this is a nice metaphor for season being shitty candy and playoffs being good candy, and compromices or changing the system would be neutral candy!

That could actually be fun! Each season in each div there is lots of games where the final score is 2:1 and several frag difference per map. But some teams may just avoid second game if they lose first one badly so I'm not sure if this is gonna work good in qw :<.

We could always try to combine both systems. Lets say we got 12 teams per div, split it 2x6 and order clans to play each other twice, so every clan would play up to 10 games. Then REAL playoffs, 1A vs 2B, 2A vs 1B, etc. Could be nice .