Hi!

I had an idea of something that MIGHT work out for the whole EQL Div1/2/3 problem. It's just a rough idea tho, without any details

PDF file below:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/p9i75d

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What you think?

Lot more one-sided matches.

Temptation to give WO in order to be 4th/10th instead of 3rd/9th.

I don't understand "30 games, every team faces each other once".


I think Hooraytio had similar idea. So maybe this could happen if admins get too annoyed with the div placement dramas.

Fixed!


Sure that "temptation" will happen, but it's difficult to predict how other clans will perform.

Unfortunately it's not going to please everybody. Rapes can happen and they will, no matter what decision is made.


Anyways, just trying to help out.

I think its a good idea. Im just worried that the lowest skilled teams cant be arsed with those 8-10 rape games that they will face :/

Would work nice, if you excluded div3 from this completely.

Yeah because the bottom div2 teams would be very happy to not only lose to the whole div2 but to be raped by div1 as well?

I think we have to include the whole qwscene in the same table from now on. We dont win anything in terms of activity when we split the scene up into 3 or more different segments that just refuse to play anyone in a higher segment.

The difference is, that in the current conditions if you merge div1+div2, the div2 teams will only have to play 2 additional div1 teams.

However, if you merge all divs, div3 teams will have to play 8 additional teams.

Please, can you see the elemental difference?

You are just looking at current season and its active clans. Dont you see that there will be more mid-div1 clans reappearing with this system?

Start playing some 4on4 again johnny, you dont seem to grasp the basics of 4on4 clan mentality
Why should bottom clans in div2 have to face div1 while div3 top clans dont? Its not like its a big skill-gap and most of the time the pracs between these clans are very even. The top div3 clans even give the mid div2 clans good fights.

Every clan should just play everyone like in old times. It sucks to lose big but everyone cant win right? Besides, every clan gets into a playoff consisting of clans on their own level.

Division system just makes the scene smaller and some players never even play vs eachother, isnt that quite sad when we are so few?

Yeah, my div3 friends are very sad they cannot play Slackers (lol). Also, it's funny how you always bring this ad-persona argument pointing at me having a 4on4 experience break (it seems like you've now noticed I've actually played some 4on4 in the past, good job!).

Anyway, I don't participate in 4on4, that's true, but I'm also running (helping with) ignition tournament now and I've met all those rookies for whom it is crucial to not waste time on absolute-rape matches. This system ignores such players. I simply care more for low-skill players than for high-skill players. I do that because I find low-skill players more important for the future of the game. I understand this is a personal preference and as this is your tournament, you will have your own priorities. Also I understand there will never be an ideal system for everyone. So this is my "two cents" and I'm not gonna comment on this topic anymore.

I just find it funny that you seem to care so much for something you dont participate in and als seem to think you know so much about.
Ive known all the time how much 4on4 youve been involved in before and in recent years. Im still surprised you care so much about it given the amount of time youve spent on it.

Yeah I just dont understand why we should split the scene anymore. It is possible that it isnt directly related but the number of teams have declined for each season that divisions have been used. And the whine is just massive when some clans feel misplaced.

So maybe keep the Div 3 as it is and do the "qualifying season" with groups A and B with Div 1 and 2 only. As they will only face each other ONCE, the maximum rape games for each div 2 team is 2, since there are only 4 current Div1 active clans (and only 3 top clans) and they will be split in 2 separated groups.

Added the fact that DIV1 players are more and more playing with Div 2 clans, it will make things more interesting.

I don't think there is anything else that can be done to improve the competition.

We can also solve the problem out. Perhaps div3 is too low on skill to participate in it, perhaps it would lead to another inactivity, perhaps it wouldn't encourage ppl to learn the game and spur just the opposite... Perhaps.

The solution to this is make not 2 but 4 groups (A,B, C, D) just like 4 divisions in EQL. A and B playing each other TWICE and C and D doing the same as presented in Hoora's and strk's idea.
All based on skill, experience and lineups. Still many games, not many rapes, lots of fun, lots of QW, hopefully not much inactivity. And still something new and fresh that this scene NEEDS really BAD........

Offtopic: Hooraytio: Do you realize I still spend enormous amounts of my free time on QW in general? Being it ezQuake, now Igntion, different qw-dev projects, local Czech QW tournaments, ... EQL is not separate from the whole "eco-cycle" of QW, it is an integral part of it, therefore I like to have my say. Feel free to point out where my actual arguments don't hold, feel free to say your opinion is different, but discriminating me from the debate merely because I don't play 4on4 anymore is wrong.

#11
You forget that the clan composition will change with the suggested system. Now you have potential div1 players joining div2 clans because they dont have enough time for really competetive play, cant be arsed to get raped by f0m/sr, dont have a chance to win div1 anyway etc.

Now think about your new system, now they have around 10 clans they can easily win vs and rape if they team up again. So they leave their div2 mates and join the same clans they used to play in and getting spanked by the top4 clans.

As soon as the mid-low div1 players see the chance of having an amount of clans to win vs they will get together and join up. Thats the mentality of the current 4on4 scene.

Thus, the mid-low div2 clans wont face around 2 rapes but rather 4-6 rapes. This is why I think the whole 4on4 scene should be involved in the same table and learn the hard way. Keep excluding div3 and they wont even come close to div2 level.

#13 I think every clan should participate in the same table from now on because there are so few players/clans left. How much does a few unbalanced games really hurt when you are free to prac the same 3-4 clans at your own level the rest of the season exactly how much you want? I think its wrong, as you suggest, to exclude div3 (who is div3 anyway, there is no clear borderline) from the rest of the 4on4 scene. Especially when each tier get their own playoffs in the end.

Lets say that the lowest clans get around 12 really hard games and around 6 more balanced games (yeah i think the number of clans will rise somewhat using a new system since the lineups mostly in div2 clans will thin out and players will create more of the old middiv1 clans again). Then you get 8 hours of, Ill admit it, kinda boring games and 4 hours of, hopefully, more fun games. Is it really that bad when you can keep praccing those 6 clans over and over?

Everywhere else in life you are going to end last, get beaten, score low etc etc when you are a newcomer. Why is QW different? Imo, it shouldnt be.

When you start to divide the scene in different skill groups you will _always_ have a problem with the border line cases.
If we, instead, make 2 equally strong (as equal as possible) we wont get the same problem. The season will very accurately show how good each clan is and in the end each playoffs should be very competetive since its directly based on the clans progress during the season. When we use divisions the winner of a division (div2-3-4 etc) can be decided before the games even start because the team was misplaced.

It should be respected that there are players/teams that have no interest in improvement. You can dislike that all you like, and it might be contra-productive for an organized environment such as a league, but many players just like to play a few relaxing games. Those exist in div2, div3 and until not too long ago they had also been in div1 with CMF (and possibly FS a little longer ago). Some seem to believe that it's only natural to improve after a while, invest a lot of time and effort and move up a division. This isn't true. IMO all efforts in order to "improve the general skill of teams/divisions/whatever" are useless and focus on the wrong points. I never was a big fan of the whole division structure thinking, in fact, when that had been introduced ~2004, I left the game shortly after because it took a LOT of the competetive effect out of the game. Before that, you pracced and played with everyone, you sometimes had to "test the waters" just to see where you stand. Nowadays the game is so transparent with the possibility to watch all games live from all povs, find demos everywhere (again, all povs) and so few players that one can learn about the capabilities of every team within just a few days.

There is no thinking like "KOFF beat TVS on dm2 who beat Lithium on e1m2 - so do we stand a chance vs Lithium"? You know the teams you stand a chance against, you know the teams you beat easily and you know the teams you get raped by every time. This can't be undone, and to some degree it's great because the technical possibilities enable us to concentrate on the game we can enjoy more and that requires less time.

Whatever is done next, please remember to create a pleasant environment for those who do NOT take the game too seriously. Many of those who took the game very seriously are long gone. The remainers are often those who have played the game for ages, sign up for the league every season and just play without paying too much attention at "what is going wrong", i.e. "qw politics".

It would be stupid to look for certain reasons such as wrong map pool, no changes etc., it's just a lack of motivation to play for the majority. What could cause more people to spend more precious time on QW again? In the end it comes down to this question in my opinion.

If you look back over the years a lot of the league admins have been relatively inactive 4on4 players, not just EQL but NQR and SD also.
Also if you look at other forms of competition (sports etc) in many cases valuable contributions are made from people who do not regularly play the game. I do not believe that there is a direct correlation between activity and ability to come up with good suggestions for the league/scene.

Anyway my opinion on this issue is that clans that want to play, those with high commitment levels i.e. the sort of teams you want involved in a league, will typically play almost regardless of the league structure. If the only QW league going was one using the format suggested here I'm sure teams would play. If it was a divisional structure again teams would play. The key things that I would see as required are:

-Clearly outlined structure for the tournament
-Feedback period during which tweaks can be suggested from anyone (even people who don't intend to play in it)
-Tournament structure finalised before signups - no last minute hidden surprises - may need some predefined rules about what would happen depending on number of signups
-Integrated coverage of the tournament - get the community more involved, we all know from past experience that writers run out of steam so you need 3 writers per div not 3 overall. When I was a novice player I know one thing I really liked was seeing your clan get written about on news sites. Whereas nowadays a clan could have a big upset victory in div2/3 and maybe not get a news post about it anywhere.

I've had a few ideas floating in my head around how to make some matchups more even, stuff like letting the 'weaker' team choose their opponents map, but with a tb3 pool that probably won't have much impact and there is alway the challenge of how you systematically identify the 'weaker' team.

Well, another inactive player here with an idea:

All clans in one group round-robin. Problem of too many and uneven matches is solved by handing out WOs by seedings at the beginning of the season.

You have to play N clans seeded above and below you. You can challenge any clan above you; the WO is removed and you play for the points.

Pros:
- If you get misplaced in the seeding it's not a disaster/joke. You will probably just get/give more challenges. Nobody's season is ruined due to being misplaced.
- Each clan is kind of placed in a division where they are average. Interesting matches should follow.
- No division split. As pointed out ITT, current division split is a self-reinforcing structure.

Cons:
- Top clans don't get as many opponents as they might want.
- Admins still have to evaluate clan skill.

Example:
For the sake of simplicity, using only 13 clans, 1-0 points and N of 3.

Season start seedings and points:
1 9 clan1
2 8 clan2
3 7 clan3
4 6 clan4
5 5 clan5
6 4 clan6
7 3 clan7
8 2 clan8
9 1 clan9
10 0 clan10
11 0 clan11
12 0 clan12
13 0 clan13

Clan 8 has a WO over clans 12 and 13. Will play clans 5,6,7,9,10 and 11. And can challenge clans 1-4.
Clan 1 plays only 3 matches, plus any challenges they might get.

I wont make an end of season (before playoffs) scenario, because its too hard. It would look the basically the same as if a normal round-robin had been played.

Hangtime makes a good point. There should be more coverage. Certainly it's a lack of "sites", such as challenge-network, methos, planetquake, quake.de (and whatever local sites there were), besmella, clan sites' etc - dozens of indepedent sites where one could read/follow the scene and get to read about different views. This is all very centralized now, qw.nu network is the contact point for all things QW.
Phil's show is a great opportunity to cover some EQL, stress great performances and speak about players. Regrettably, 4on4 isn't really much talked about. People need to be motivated to play and motivated to improve, I think "following" and talking about it might be a good start.

Open a Clan Arena server, make teams mixing all divisions and make a tourney.

Then, be happy!