Yeah we got 2 leagues, atleast one of those could have a forced schedule, then the sleeping div1 clans could always play in the other one.

54 active clans remained at conclusion of NQR10
Starting out we only have 35 clans sign up for NQR11. And so little discussion.......
Still a few days to go so heres hoping more clans get signed up.

I think a problem is, that you dont always have the same teams. It is not like in soccer were you have in the end of the season the same teams like in the beginning of the next. So it is always difficult to seed new teams. lets say a div 2 team and a div3 teams split up. and some members form a new one. is it now div 2 or 3.

Another problem is the size of the divisions. (i have only played eql6 so I dont know much about nqr) In each division there should be the same amount of teams. Lets say 8 teams per div. First 2 advance to next div. Last 2 are going down. Here we have the problem with the new formed teams. I really dont know a solution right away. Maybe if the new formed team is seeded as div 3, they must play a best of 3 or something against the 6th of the div. If they win, the last 3 teams of this div have to go one div down.

I know that between some of the existing divs the skill gap is really high and there will be a lot of whining because some teams have no chance to win their div with these rules, but there are also soccerclubs who havent won their leagues in decades.

A really important point for me is the schedule. Make it tight. Tight as an 8 year old. You have 1 week for a game. you can raincheck one game in the whole season. if you miss your first 2 games you will be kicked out.


i would also change the WO rule. The team who wants to play should get 3 points. The one who doesnt show of minus 1. I will explain why. You have team1 and 2 who battle for the first spot and you have team3. team3 lost with their perfect lineup against team1 (2-1) now they have to face team2. now they dont have their perfect lineup. they think:" ahh fuck that we dont want to get raped, lets give them a WO" so team2 gets 3 points and thats the decider for spot one. if team3 faces -1 point for a WO they will play their game. maybe they play well and get one map. and things at top of div are fair again.


And here comes my last point. Coverage. If we really cut the sizes of the divs down to 8 teams. it wouldnt be that much of a problem for 2 people per div to write about whats going on, making interviews, prediction reporting about the drama and so on.


We have to face competition with comercial websides like esreality and stuff. we will never get new young player if there are only 2 newsposts on our leaguesides. A 3 months old saying: "league started" and a 3 weeks old saying:" leagues ended with lots of inactivity. BTW you suck!" We have to make things interesting. People who think reppie is cool or who have seen tVs and were blown away should have the possibility to read an interview with them and know some facts. You know if you want to have a supporter of something today you cant just present the product. you have to sell it and have a community.

Ahh and now definitly my last point. UPDATE YOUR CLANPAGES. As soon as somebody moves away from the few big community sides and surfs to a clanpage.... last post 3 years ago. "Oh, this game must be pretty dead!"


OK long ass post. just wanted to contribute something. Hey pleura will be back in april. take care

I tried to get people for columns etc before i dropped out of EQL this season. I had one volunteer, Blasphemer (i think, i'm sorry if i'm wrong), who ended up writing two articles. It's basically the same thing on qw.nu - the same old people keeping stuff together. It's rather weird seeing how each post gets a couple of thousand hits and it's a quite grateful crowd to produce content for when it comes to articles. Not everyone will agree with you if you write your own opinions, but they will for sure read it and appreciate the content.


Quoted for truth.

Indeed.

Lots of players have said this lately. It's really understandable too, back last summer I suggested to the league admins that there probably shouldn't be too many tournaments running at the same time, for example EQL in the autumn and NQR in the winter/spring and some other tournaments in the mean while (like dmm4/duel/2on2 to complement) so that there wouldn't be so much hassle all the time.

Well obviously it is so for reason or the another, but it has also backfired somewhat as activity has went down. So why not up the pace a bit? Two games a week should be pretty nice and it would also make shorter seasons and it would also add activity. Because in the end you'd end up playing two games a week with two big leagues running at the same time.

KTX stats bring opportunities for some interesting "titles". Like "the most damaging player" (the one who gives most damage per match .. with some limit like 'at least 33% activity'), "the best enemy rl killer", "the best shafter", "the best aimer", "best quadrunner" ... hell I could think of tons of such titles, imagine combining "most damage with least picked-up rls" or any other combination. Make uploading of logs as a requirement, the required commands on client side are:

I know parsing the stats requires some coding, but don't you think it would add a lot? Imagine those stats "per game", "per division", "per week", ...
I'm sure someone could write a nice perl script or even sed script that would parse those stats into something easily readable for a program. (Someone also tried to make KTX send those stats in a better format, but I don't remember where that project ended.)

Why is this important? Easy, let's say there is a match going on and one of the players is known as the best enemy rl killer, hell, let's see what he can do live! Oh and now he's battling with the best quadrunner! drama! (hehe)

It's not important to have the stats-parsing done right now. Just make uploading of the logs required! You can parse them later.

oh, btw. goqsane: very laughable.

like fog said, rookie div is for rookies! people get scared of qw when they get raped in rookie div
soon we have to create a rookie-rookie div :XX

theres no point having too leagues running side by side, as clans will concentrate on one and not the other. we need one big league with just two divisions as suggested. I know teams feel that they would get owned but thats compeditive games for you, you just need to get better or get a stronger line up. There would be loads of good games aswell. And if we had one league structure there would be alot more people to admin it and do write ups etc etc "premership" ftw

I agree with John_cz. Stats are a way to improve our leagues. Making them more interesting to follow AND play.

Personally I actually agree, but having "shorter seasons" is not that easy. The EQL site actually featured a poll prior to EQL Season 4 (?) where people/clans could vote how many games per week they wanted to play and the vast majority actually voted for "one game per week". Although I believe it would have its benefits to play more than that, I also believe that it's a fairly risky approach. And the last thing I'd want to happen is clans not playing their games because they can't cope with the schedule.

However, without wanting to badmouth the EQL6 admins, I'd like to point out that how the last EQL season went is NOT THE STANDARD for how leagues go in QuakeWorld. Playoffs started MONTHS after the group games finished, and it's totally obvious that by then, clans and players are either not as motivated anymore or even split up totally in some cases. As far as I know that hasn't happened in NQR and it won't this time either - and that's a promise.

Nix also made some nice suggestions, with an even amount of teams in every div and the top-2 moving up a div and the bottom 2 moving up a div. But that's just never going to work. Clans constantly change lineup, split up, make comebacks, get new members that change their overall skill, and so on and so forth.

Another problem I see is clans not willing to play in a division that they certainly won't be able to win. Just take Gold Cup as an example now: People want small divisions and short leagues, with perhaps 6 teams in Gold Cup A and another 6 teams in Gold Cup B. Then look at the signups: So far (and I don't really see that changing) we got 7 clans for Gold Cup, namely: Clan MalFunction, Easyriders, Firing Squad, Fragomatic, KOFF, Slackers, The Viper Squad. Now theoretically we got two options: a) Put those 7 clans into one group and let clans complain (for a good reason) - yet again - that they're always playing against the same clans and that it's getting kinda boring, or b) Add another 5 unwilling clans to Gold Cup, with the high probability of those clans whining and refusing to play their games due to not wanting to get owned. And then what? We got 6 clans in a group, 2 of which are idle, and the whole group-stage becomes somewhat dull and redundant. It really bothers me that clans would rather try and become first in their group of Silver Cup than fourth in their group in Gold Cup. I mean just look at some of the signups... has losing really become that much of a huge, unbearable issue?

Dont forget suddendeath, they fit in gold cup too...

I think bigger groups with differnt divs mixed are better. Then your clan always have a chance to win against at least one other (less good) team... Its not fun to always fight in the top div against the same clans all the time, as soma said, high div players get bored with that and eventually stop playing...

(much) shorter seasons and bigger/more diverse groups, yes.

Yeah, having bigger groups and more games is the perfect way to have shorter seasons, I agree!

(??????????????????????)

Do a draft league! I'm heavily involved in the IDL which is a ZDaemon draft league for CTF. There are only roughly ~60 competitive players so clan leagues would never work but a draft league keeps almost everyone interested and active. I know I've suggested it before without much interest in EU but it is always something you can try. One of the main benefits would be top players skill rubbing off on lower skilled since they'd be on the same teams. Also you would not necessarily need skill divisions anymore so teams and all the players would be a near even playing field given a stringent draft process. Good luck whatever you guys do.

http://unidoom.org/idl/past/winter2007/ - First season
http://intldoomleague.net/past/summer2007/ - Second season
http://intldoomleague.net/ - Third season

the two division system sounds a little shitty. i dont like the idea of having the best clans around with the average skilled clans. it's just silly when the best clans still compete only with each others as they would in division 1, but now they'd just all be getting free points from div3 clans. ok, surely you'd get more games and activity if people wouldn't start crying after losing big time to a more skillful clan. and besides, the shittier clans (div2-div3) wouldn't have any real chance to win a div, which is always a nice goal.

peope too often compare these things to some real sport with millions of dollars. weaker clans in qw just cant send a scout to argentina to check the junior games and pick a hot new quad runner and wish to get a place in uefa cup. and i asume there are people besides me who aren't too keen on recruiting better players in hopes of a better spot in the rankings

soma, mipa- those are valid points, but i still think fewer divisions would work better than the current system. how many divisions did eql have, 5? i think 3 divisions would work much better/be more fun. rookies would be integrated into div 3 where they obviously would lose their first games against better clans- can't be helped. i think diversity is the key here. it could make for some interesting games/ upsets for stronger teams.
don't just think of cases where a newbie team gets raped by div0's but rather think of a team like team freedom that maybe just needs a little motivation to pracc that little bit more to compete with div1 teams.
this eql's div 2 was proof that many divisions does not equal fair/fun divisions.

edit: misspelled 'soma'

whats this "current system"? the system eql uses or the one nqr uses? of course too many divisions add a higher possibility of getting more inactivity to a certain division, and also the cases where clans are pretty much at the margin of two divisions and either one seems to be wrong for them. the nqr system with three different skill levels (and rookies have their own, if they do - i dunno) is far better than two divisions, yet 5 or 4 divisions would be more to my liking if there were more activity and/or clans

by current system i meant a system where you have 5 or more seperate divisions, with battles between a relatively small group of clans only. i don't see a big difference between nqr's and eql's system. nqr might have 3 'skill groups' but with a A/B group each they still have 6 divisions how i see it.
i agree with you that qw shouldn't be compared to or organized like a football league. i'm just arguing from a spectator's point of view here and i wouldn't mind a certain amount of uneven matchups, that would come with bigger divisions, as long as there's the occasional highlight game or unexpected upset.

oh yes forgot about the a/b-piers completely. i remember some season when there were like 4 teams per div or group. but yes very different thoughts on the matter depending of the div they are in i think. div1 players wouldnt mind raping shittier clans for breakfast, div2 players wouldnt mind fixing their ego by raping div3 clans after having their part of the div1 massacre. div3 players left weeping like a 14 year old girl raped by 7 bears. spectators just enjoy the raping and might just donate some money to qw.nu if the rape in question is hot enough. anyway three divisions are super ok, while two is completely out of question

I read many things I can agree with and want to sum up the most important for me:

Make the leagues have a better flow by shorter play times and (much) more pressure on games getting played. As someone already mentioned, not having the star lineup always ready makes the games more interesting, less predictable.

Give the clans more reward than "just" having won Div 1,2,3,.. and putting the name in glory. It shouldn't be too hard to find a sponsor for some nice goodies in hardware. Having a more "worldwide, competitive, ESL-like" flavour will attract newbies, while pissing of some of the old schoolers. But hey, someone must jump over his shadow from time to time to move on...

The number of divisions is a hard one imho, maybe thinking about a group placement with following playoffs like Smackdown would be worth again. I experienced the last EQL as "div-overloaded" while still having many clans misplaced. This isn't the admins fault I assume, but you could think about a system that makes it possible to adjust this during the season. But then again, a shorter season will help to put the clans in the right Div faster.

So far.

At least it would be something "fresh" again. The Quake nations cup has it alright, it's just that the group games are kinda pointless as everyone goes through anyway - although with a better/worse opponent depending on where they end up in the group. And it's a "nations" cup...

For all i care we might just as well do one big ladder and on top of that fire up a smackdownish cup again. But i guess then every clan can't win their division every season. :p What's the charm in being best among the worst anyway when you don't gain anything by moving up a division?

The point is that it will affect how good your starting position will be in playoffs. This scheme has been used in lots of international hockey tournaments.

I know, it doesn't change the fact that it's boring though! .)

That is your opinion not supported by any arguments so far.

...while your only argument is that it has been used in hockey? I tend to like it the football way - less games with more at stake.

Short thoughts:

EQL Div 5 was pretty allright. A couple of the clans blatantly refused to play us but we got most games in.

Picke in rookies? LOL, he played with us in AV and he was the star player by a huge margin (and we're
a pretty solid div5-team).

NQR is looking hot, some players are out of place in rookies - but I understand that it's hard to
for the admins to know each and every player. Picke was smart enough to reverse his name as well

I think next thing could be a solution: teams should be rewarded for their activity.
If team lost the game 0:2 in a good fight, or even they were brave enough to face much stronger clan without chances to win a single map and were raped badly, they should earn more points, than clans which chickened out, refused to play and gave w.o., or didn't want to be bothered to play.
Maybe it would help.
Scoring system is a theme to discuss.

Hey Zepp. VVD already made that suggestion yesterday on #nqr and I totally agree. It's a nice thing to award clans for activity and give them something like a small "bonus" for at least having the courage to try their best versus a clan they'd have no chance of winning against. It will be a topic for discussion in our private channel today... I'll let you know of the outcome.

By the way, Bloodpunch was placed in Bronze Cup in case you didn't notice.

Sweet, we're back to talking about how good Picke is! \o/ Where's Hagge??!?

The ongoing discussion about misplaced players (and as a result also clans) in divs made me think about this basic problem, tho I didn't find a solution yet. But I can sum up my thoughts again...
It's impossible to control the building of clans, many clans exist for years, people are friends, people have the same sexual orientation ( ;-P ), they just want to play together because they enjoy it. You (admins) shouldn't interfere in that and you probably couldn't.
So let's take a recent example and put NAIM and their player Arnette on the table. I guess all can agree that he raises the overall skill level of this clan from being "good bronze" into "could be silver". Seeing the system of EQL and NQR, it could happen like this... NAIM wins the bronze cup and in the next season gets promoted to silver...all probs gone. But here comes the big dynamic draft of the qw-scene into play. You will never know how this clan will look the next season. Will they even play? Will Arnette go inactive? How will the other clans move in skill relatively to NAIM? So, new season, new dices...and the same problem for div-building.
And if a clan feels like being placed too high, it would be the same procedure...finish in the low ranks of a div, getting placed one div lower in the next season. But the same problem will appear here. Maybe this clan gets a starplayer in their ranks or pracs like mad or or or...

I thought about a points system, which would always reflect the actual skill-level of your clan and the clan you played in the points you earn(ed). This would need bigger divs tho, or could even work with one big div.
When Clan A plays Clan B, both earn points relatively to their position in the div. The lower positioned clan gets more points for winning a map, the higher positioned less. So far nothing new. But what about adjusting these earned points everytime a game in this div is played. You might just look at the position of the clans, or you could even take the frag-ratio (percentage) into account. But don't get me wrong - a win must stay a win.
Why this? Because of the mentioned problem, that in many cases you cannot evaluate the strength of a clan BEFORE the season starts. You will always see what happens after some games, but then it's too late to change the divs. With the system I tried to describe above, the divs point system would automatically adjust to the strength of the clans in it. Play a clan which turns out to be placed too low and you will get rewarded much better (after this clan played some games...), even if you lose.

Could you understand me? :-E Is it this crap? :-( I would like to hear your opinion and discuss it. :-)