Introducing The League [name WIP]; an alternative to the endless stream of tournaments

[Squidimitri]

GK would definitely be interested in this.

Also, personally I think whatever ranking system used for seeding divisions should include the most tournaments possible (I know @BestTeaMaker had some overall ones but those might be getting worked on right now)

 

[Njok]

GK would definitely be interested in this.

Also, personally I think whatever ranking system used for seeding divisions should include the most tournaments possible (I know @BestTeaMaker had some overall ones but those might be getting worked on right now)

If we are to use those rankings, and that is very likely (but not decided yet), we will indeed take the overall rankings rather than the Monthly.

Also if i'm not mistaken, they are based on match ups more heavily than on tournament finishes, which imo is the best way to go about seeding several divisions.

Great to see the positive replies so far! Keep it coming and let's make this an actual thing! :)

 

[Magnet-Alpha]

A league is probably what this community needed, aka weekly based matches for a big competition and divisions repartition.

As for the format, D is the one everyone is probably accustomed to by now, so it may be confortable, but personnaly I would be for experimenting A format. I know it may be long, with at most 15 matches, but I think it has some good advantages. First for the players, if you lose the first Bo5 3-0, you still have 2 Bo5 to comeback, that can lead to interesting comebacks, while in a Bo7 if you lose 3 games, you feel the pressure to not be able to lose more than 2 games. In the same time, it allows people more time to adapt to the opponent's play style, that can also lead to interesting strategie changes.

Also, a Bo9 would be a continuous game flow, with a big rush on a team victory, while a Bo3 of matches would make each Bo5 victory exciting I think, while allowing some little "break" between each Bo5. It's a bit complicated to explain, it's more a feeling.

In any case and format, Koopa Clan will be interested by this League.

 

[Flying_Tortoise]

GT/SK/Squiddernauts' fate.

Um what? damn news travels fast lmao.

GT isn't dead :( Just going through a phase. You might as well throw a lot of other teams in that list as well. @Zarkith

what tyflo said *thumbs up*

edit: oh i should probably make this post relevant to the topic....
....I got nothing. already said everything before x). "Still looking forward to this?" There I can say that

 

[⭐️Latias]

Proposed default match time is Sunday at 12 PM PST / 3 PM EST / 8PM GMT, although teams are free to agree on a different day and time that better suits their schedules, but within the week of the current round

Does this mean each match in a tournament will be given a week to be completed? While this is great for people on my side of the world as tournaments usually start 3am in the morning, wouldn't making a tournament stretch out over a few weeks increase the amount of drop-outs?

 

[Njok]

Does this mean each match in a tournament will be given a week to be completed? While this is great for people on my side of the world as tournaments usually start 3am in the morning, wouldn't making a tournament stretch out over a few weeks increase the amount of drop-outs?

It's a league, not a tournament so yes it will run over the course of multiple weeks. We believe that having to play just 1 match in a week should put a lot less pressure on teams as it is easier for a group of people to match their schedules for 1 match rather than for a whole tournament that will run for half a day. That should drastically decrease the amount of drop outs.

 

[Agosta44]

Leagues don't work well because teams die within the season period frequently. Considering how fast teams have been dying lately it's going to exasperate the issue. We don't have the player pool to support one that's stable.

 

[Dragonuto]

Leagues don't work well because teams die within the season period frequently. Considering how fast teams have been dying lately it's going to exasperate the issue. We don't have the player pool to support one that's stable.

We would. It wouldn't be a large scale 24 team a league job I don't think but We'll have enough people for 2 divisions! :p

 

[Zarkith]

Leagues don't work well because teams die within the season period frequently. Considering how fast teams have been dying lately it's going to exasperate the issue. We don't have the player pool to support one that's stable.

For the record, our team went inactive because overlapping schedules and obligations made it impossible to play in tournaments. This however, is a much smaller time commitment and something that, had it existed before last weekend, would have kept us alive.

The notion that a league would exasperate the issue is pretty far fetched when you consider everything that the constant deluge of tournaments has done to actually exasperate it.

 

[Agosta44]

For the record, our team went inactive because overlapping schedules and obligations made it impossible to play in tournaments. This however, is a much smaller time commitment and something that, had it existed before last weekend, would have kept us alive.

The notion that a league would exasperate the issue is pretty far fetched when you consider everything that the constant deluge of tournaments has done to actually exasperate it.

I helped run a league and participated in others over 8 years in the MK scene, which was much larger than Splatoon. I know how clans work and I was well aware of how the Splatoon scene would go after a few months of life. It's pretty much par for the course.

 

[Ultramus]

I helped run a league and participated in others over 8 years in the MK scene, which was much larger than Splatoon. I know how clans work and I was well aware of how the Splatoon scene would go after a few months of life. It's pretty much par for the course.

And I was part of the SC2 scene, which dwarfs MK8 in Spades, I played for multiple years in the collegiate star league, having matches you guessed it, once per week, culminating in a grand final LAN tournament in Austin with teams traveling from all over to attend. Did we have teams drop out during the season? Yes, was it an issue? Not at all, if a team drops out they just become a walkover for their remaining matches, if in dropping out they still somehow would have been in the final tournament, their spot goes to the next team down.

Firstly, in the upper division, it is very obvious that the teams in the 1-10 slot of the monthly rankings have unsurprisingly existed since nearly the games inception, so it shouldn't be an issue, in the lower division, if a team drops out they will be replaced by another team in the next season.

Assuming that our scene is dead is a bit defeatist, and certainly a self-fulfilling prophecy if we allow that to hinder ideas to grow it. I've seen esports scenes come and go too, the point is to do what we can for a game we enjoy and want to be an Esport, if at the end of the day it doesn't work out so be it, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

 

[Icky]

(I'm Sicky from SND, one of the new recruits during recent try-outs)

Personally, I think playing one or two league match(es) a week, with Bo5 games and 3 x sets (i.e. longest match would be 3-2, 2-3 and 3-2 with either option A or D), would be much easier for teams to compete in and analyze their progression in the divisions. I think we could easily have monthly or bi-monthly divisions with 8 teams in each division, top 2 of lower division play bottom 2 of higher division in a relegation match (i.e. #8 in Div 1 vs #1 in Div 2, and #7 in Div 1 vs #2 in Div 2) would work wonders for the community.

At the moment, there are two major problems with the community:

1. Burn-out Drop-out: too many current teams with 8 or less players are getting burned out and not competing anymore or regularly in the tournaments. This isn't a problem for squads like SND (e.g. at BB4 even without: Rocket, Sarge, Mystic, Cherry, and several other players who were busy and unavailable - we still had a team of 5 players competitive enough to get equal 9th, and a second team as well), but for smaller squads the lack of a large list of players really hurts their ability to participate in tournaments. The league could really help provide consistency and flexibility for these squads.

2. Lack of universal ranking and poor motivation due to skill gap: too many squads have no motivation to play in tournaments outside of just having a fun crack at it, it's fun to play other new teams and have a competitive game, but without a univeraal division/ranking system, as soon as they face NSTC or Squid-Box it becomes "well screw this, why play if we're never gonna make top 8 because of how good these guys are?", and the "git gud" or "there'll always B some1 gudder" arguments don't apply because it's no fun to be stuck in bottom limbo while you develop as a player. The skill gap between the top 12/16 squads and the others is too far and will kill the community if it continues in the current fashion of tournaments every weekend.

The community needs this, so I support this wholeheartedly (note that I'm speaking personally, not on behalf of SND).

 

[⭐️Latias]

It's a league, not a tournament so yes it will run over the course of multiple weeks. We believe that having to play just 1 match in a week should put a lot less pressure on teams as it is easier for a group of people to match their schedules for 1 match rather than for a whole tournament that will run for half a day. That should drastically decrease the amount of drop outs.

I don't know how I forgot what a league was...
As long as these leagues don't go on around the time of exams, generally this time of year, I think having a league system is pretty good. I'm still not sure about the amount of drop-outs, from what I've seen from other games using this system, 50% of people drop out. I know those other games aren't splatoon but it could be just the same.
I personally feel like teams of 4 people would be at a disadvantage as if one member drops out the whole team would have to drop out. Over a long period of time, due to unforseen reasons or exam etc, there's more of a chance for this to happen.
Don't get me wrong. I really hope this league works out. I really hope I'm wrong and no one drops out. I'd really like to join a league/ tourney without getting up at 3am. Most of all, I'd really like to play some splatoon with the lovely people on squidboards.

 

[Silver]

Can't speak for the rest of SRL but I would be interested in this.

There are a lot of tournaments going on, pretty much every week there's one going on and even 2 going on in the same weekend and it's kinda hard to keep up with all of them. A league would make it easier to manage the tournaments that are ones we can expect to join and tournaments we may join.

As for the format, I'd prefer C. Only stipulation I'd add onto that is maybe the same mode can't be played twice in a row? Teams tend to have a preference towards certain modes so they might try to keep the BOx being nothing but that mode. So maybe something like:

Round 1:
Home picks mode
Away picks map

Round 2:
Home picks map
Away picks from remaining 2 modes

Round 3:
Home picks from all 3 modes
Away picks map

At least this way the whole BOx won't just be the same mode over and over. My example might not be the best but I think my point comes across. This would still leave potential for repeating modes after it goes back to choosing from 3 but it would still stop it from being nothing but X mode.

But whatever ends up happening, please. PLEASE treat Rainmaker equally to other modes. I'm probably in the minority here but I think Rainmaker is just as good as the rest. Most issues people have with the mode have either been fixed (map exploits) or already exist in other modes and are worse there (camping). And it's not like it's hard to counter camping in Rainmaker. Many times have we been stopped and we have stopped others.

 

[Vintagestep]

Our Squad is really interested on this(Hokusai Squad).
We're kinda new here since we were participating in the Spanish tournaments before, but people there don't manage to grasp people properly and make a lot of weird stuff(turf on tournaments for example XD).
So we moved here and saw the problems on BB4 and some on the last Calamari Cup, they last too long and this can solve that problem, swiss games and finally a double elimination tournament of top teams.
Thing is how many division and teams per division will we have? BB4 had 42 teams if I'm right and 4 drops, then we have a lot of teams that didn't participate because of resting or this time of the year(college/school test and so).
I don't like the idea of having a lot of divisions with few teams, too much steps to move forward I think, so I'd say we can try to have three with at least 16 teams and 24 maximum(but like this we have to have two matches per week probably). Then top 4 if 16 or top 8 if 24 can make a tournament to get in the next division(with bottom of the upper one), but I don't know how to proceed with the top players.

Also I like the idea of Bo3 sets for a Bo5 game, decreases the pressure and can lead to change players easily(maybe 2 per set, without thinking about DC).
Also I suggest more work on DC rules, is not fair to repeat a game when both teams had DCs and them when one have say "It's your second time DCing, so, even if it was first minute and you stopped playing we won't do anything, time is pushing us to move to next round" Both teams DC shouldn't count for when people of one team DC, that was clearly a "server issue" like the one of the finals since the one that DC rarely have a DC in months... Also I wouldn't call for a repeat if both teams have DCs at the middle of the game and the half of the team alive, we managed to win a 3 vs 2 game(DC happened at 3:30 more or less) but they call for a repeat. I know this is not on topic right now, but I think things like this shouldn't happen more. And with TO perhaps not being online at the time of the match we should clarify things properly before anything begins.

I would recommend to all teams to have at least 6 members and at most 14/16(you can make two teams with 3 or 4 subs then), It's not difficult to get people from your country/state.


I think we should attempt to grasp people from some of the big tournaments, but not all so we can have a regular endless tourney for the ones that want/can join then each two or three months out of the league, maybe like that bottom players will grow faster as they can still taste the game of the big squads, but being able to play games with players of their same lvl regularly. And if this thing finally happens we should also try to get some Japanese teams as well(I'm sure most EU teams are here as well), but seeding with them would be quite difficult.

 

[Njok]

Thing is how many division and teams per division will we have? BB4 had 42 teams if I'm right and 4 drops, then we have a lot of teams that didn't participate because of resting or this time of the year(college/school test and so).

We have not decided yet on how big the divisions would be. It ultimately depends on how many sign up and what the level of play of all those teams is. We can't just say there will be X amount of teams per division, because then it might happen that the skill gap between teams in the same division is too large, which is one of the points that we are trying to avoid by choosing this format in the first place.

I don't like the idea of having a lot of divisions with few teams, too much steps to move forward I think, so I'd say we can try to have three with at least 16 teams and 24 maximum(but like this we have to have two matches per week probably). Then top 4 if 16 or top 8 if 24 can make a tournament to get in the next division(with bottom of the upper one), but I don't know how to proceed with the top players.

As said above, the idea is to have divisions based on skill level. I don't think going with 16 teams per division will have the result we are looking for here. Besides that, a season would stretch out too long imo (not speaking for the whole staff here, this is just imo).

Also I suggest more work on DC rules, is not fair to repeat a game when both teams had DCs and them when one have say "It's your second time DCing, so, even if it was first minute and you stopped playing we won't do anything, time is pushing us to move to next round" Both teams DC shouldn't count for when people of one team DC, that was clearly a "server issue" like the one of the finals since the one that DC rarely have a DC in months... Also I wouldn't call for a repeat if both teams have DCs at the middle of the game and the half of the team alive, we managed to win a 3 vs 2 game(DC happened at 3:30 more or less) but they call for a repeat. I know this is not on topic right now, but I think things like this shouldn't happen more. And with TO perhaps not being online at the time of the match we should clarify things properly before anything begins.

We are definitely not at the point that we are publishing rules, so i don't know why you think this would be our dc rule. We'll try and come up with the fairest rule possible once we reach that stage.

I would recommend to all teams to have at least 6 members and at most 14/16(you can make two teams with 3 or 4 subs then), It's not difficult to get people from your country/state.

This is again something that would have to be decided when a full rule set is being made, but i personally think 14 is way too much. If we're talking about 1 match per week, you shouldn't need 10 subs imo.

I think we should attempt to grasp people from some of the big tournaments, but not all so we can have a regular endless tourney for the ones that want/can join then each two or three months out of the league, maybe like that bottom players will grow faster as they can still taste the game of the big squads, but being able to play games with players of their same lvl regularly.

Sorry, but i don't really understand what you mean with this. Would you mind to clarify? :)

And if this thing finally happens we should also try to get some Japanese teams as well(I'm sure most EU teams are here as well), but seeding with them would be quite difficult.

Although this would be incredible, i think that's a bit ambitious at the moment ;) maybe one day though...

 

[Vintagestep]

@Njok

1 and 2. I understand the reasons, one thing is being overwhelmed by top teams, but to be in the very bottom and have a long way to the top may make teams to grow their skill slower, well, just my opinion.

3. Just saying some bad experiences of last tourney so you consider that thing, that was not an hypothetical fact, it happened, and the first one is very noticeable on the result of the match.

4. Well, if we say a Squad can have two teams, then the Squad can have up to 3 or 4 subs at most, then you'll have 16 members as most on one Squad, then 8 per team, maybe I should clarify better the terms, just see SND, they sure have at least 10 members and they made two teams on BB4.

5. I mean, if you guys make this, then some of major tourneys should stop, lets say BB and Calamari cups for example, but also I want other big ones to happen out of this, like Inkstorm for example.

6. I know we are far for that point, first we need to make it works and all that stuff, but I partially know how we can make a bridge with the *** community, there's that Japanese Youtube that have a feature similar to forums(is similar to the groups we have here) as Japan community doesn't have a place like this, that and twitter(maybe 2ch) are the channels they use to make tournaments, thing is people is a bit busy there with the perfectural tourneys, but there's some ones out of that, and some teams have interest on playing here, but the skill gap is really high, at this point their regular lvl is a bit higher than ours.

 

[Njok]

@Njok

1 and 2. I understand the reasons, one thing is being overwhelmed by top teams, but to be in the very bottom and have a long way to the top may make teams to grow their skill slower, well, just my opinion.

3. Just saying some bad experiences of last tourney so you consider that thing, that was not an hypothetical fact, it happened, and the first one is very noticeable on the result of the match.

4. Well, if we say a Squad can have two teams, then the Squad can have up to 3 or 4 subs at most, then you'll have 16 members as most on one Squad, then 8 per team, maybe I should clarify better the terms, just see SND, they sure have at least 10 members and they made two teams on BB4.

5. I mean, if you guys make this, then some of major tourneys should stop, lets say BB and Calamari cups for example, but also I want other big ones to happen out of this, like Inkstorm for example.

6. I know we are far for that point, first we need to make it works and all that stuff, but I partially know how we can make a bridge with the *** community, there's that Japanese Youtube that have a feature similar to forums(is similar to the groups we have here) as Japan community doesn't have a place like this, that and twitter(maybe 2ch) are the channels they use to make tournaments, thing is people is a bit busy there with the perfectural tourneys, but there's some ones out of that, and some teams have interest on playing here, but the skill gap is really high, at this point their regular lvl is a bit higher than ours.

Thanks for the reply :)

I'm not saying that DC's haven't caused problems in tournaments so far, but you have to realize that it's not 1 person organizing all these tournaments. We can not control what another tourney does and you can not expect us to have the exact same rules as others.

And we do not want any tournament to stop, and especially not Booyah Battle! What we try to offer is an alternative so that teams don't feel like they have to play all the tournaments. On a side note, both the staff of Messtival and Calamari Cup are working on this project so those will likely be occurring less. Messtival won't disappear all together though, as far as i am concerned!

Basically what i'm saying is tournaments should not disappear, but they should be less frequent so that they will feel like an event again.

 

[Krozo]

I think this idea is good overall, but I think the timing is off. In my opinion tournaments work out fine as of right now. I understand people might get burnt out, but I have two points to that. 1. You don't have to play in every tournament. 2. Competitive gaming takes dedication. It takes a lot to run a team and strive to be the best, but If you really want to play this game and be the best competitively you're gonna have to deal with playing it a lot. On my end I have found entering Blooper Ink with 5-6 people available and switching out every round takes a lot of stress out of it.

That's not to say that I don't think there are too many tournaments. I do. If we could somehow find a balance between tournaments (maybe twice a month) and a league system I think it could be very beneficial to the community. The sole problem is organization, but if we can pull it off, go for it. But I don't think it should replace tournaments entirely.

 

[Vintagestep]

Thanks for the reply :)

I'm not saying that DC's haven't caused problems in tournaments so far, but you have to realize that it's not 1 person organizing all these tournaments. We can not control what another tourney does and you can not expect us to have the exact same rules as others.

And we do not want any tournament to stop, and especially not Booyah Battle! What we try to offer is an alternative so that teams don't feel like they have to play all the tournaments. On a side note, both the staff of Messtival and Calamari Cup are working on this project so those will likely be occurring less. Messtival won't disappear all together though, as far as i am concerned!

Basically what i'm saying is tournaments should not disappear, but they should be less frequent so that they will feel like an event again.

About DCs, I know, also that happened already, is not a big deal now, and in the momment we talked to the TO of the tournament, I just want people to consider that output so my Squad and the others won't feel that letdown.

And yay for all that stuff, that was the thing I was trying to say, less stress to the Squads, but still chances to participate in a couple of tournaments.