At the moment there are few teams per group in division 1 that actually are div 1 material.

If you look at:

http://www.ensl.org/contests/172
and
http://www.ensl.org/contests/173

There are a LOT of 4-0, 4-0, 4-0. I doubt this is much fun for any teams involved either steamrolling or getting steamrolled.

I would suggest divisions in the same size as the current groups which would lead to a much more interesting league to follow. Lower teams would benefit from this as well seeing as they would ALL compete with teams on similar level, as is the purpose of a league in the first place. The current system isn't optimal for creating good competition.

I've heard two arguments as to why the league is designed with groups.

1. "We want a semi/finals!"
I couldn't care less. If you win the division you win the league. I guess some people would want a semi/finals, but the groups suffer. It could work if there were enough good teams to fill 2 groups, but the sad truth is that there isn't.

2. "It gives bad teams a chance to practice against the best!"
Isn't that what PCW's are for? Leagues are for competition. EVEN competition, not getting rolled more than 50% of the games you play.

I guess a lot of teams would want to stay div1 teams for the sake of being called a div1 team, but in all honesty it gives the good teams very few good games to play and it doesn't really create excitement since most people following the competitive scene can pretty much guess who's going to win anyway.

I would much rather be able to watch a whole division worth of awesome games than watching stomps each week with a few good games sporadically spread out in a season.

Thoughts?

This is what we did for the NA divisions and its worked well for us so far. I think it would definitely be viable for the EU divisions.

As you should notice, the 2 starting Seasons (Past S1 and current S2) are some kind of transitional leagues.
I think the really one that we should take care of is S3 because, on what we have now, we dont have many stable teams and therefor S3 we all will have a lot of stable teams with months of training and play on their shoulders.

And btw if u really check "Div 1 Group B" you`ll see that there are only results of 1 week and a half, there are like 2-3 weeks of delay, so i dont see your argument about (4-0) on that group. On the other hand on "Div 1 Group A" you see that there is Archaea + Godar, so you should expect a lot of 4-0..xD

Salutes

I think wiry has a very good point!

ANd if you still want some sorft of FInal you can still have the 2 best placed teams play it out after the Season one more time.

But as Verslayer said for now ENSL just needs more info on the Teams... so this season will run its course no matter what.

But for Season3 i am hopeful that this will change!

Greets !

I don't see this as a problem, there will always be a skillgap within the divisions and there will always be 4-0 results. Someone will always get "rolled", someone will always be the worst team of a division. Obviously with larger division sizes, the skillgap will be larger as well. I personally don't mind the skillgap as long as it does not hurt the lower teams in the divisions.

Apparently it hurt the lower teams of the top division of NA, but that is far from the same in the EU div 1. All the teams in EU div 1 wants to be there and I wouldn't decrease the division sizes just to get the lower teams of div 1 out of there and satisfy a few players in the top teams. Being div 1 helps some teams to push themselves more, both in and out of official matches.

The way I see it, is that it benefits everyone to have larger division sizes, as the lower teams of the top division will push themselves to be better competetion for the top teams. As long as the lower teams of a division desires to be there, I don't see a need for change.

In any case, the semifinals/finals/3rd deciders are not going anywhere, no matter what format is chosen for season 3. It's a good climax of the season, both for the players and the viewers.

I never mentioned "larger division sizes". I said same size as groups are now.

And the point of removing groups and decreasing division size (having them the same as one group) is that these 4-0 scores would decrease over all divisions. Making the competition more fair. I have a hard time seeing any downside to this.

I don't really care about the semi/finals, but if you really want it to stay why not have top4 of div1 battle it out?

I know what you said, guess you misunderstood what I was saying. We have "larger division sizes" now. 16 teams per division, split into 2 groups of 8 teams and you want 8 teams per division, no groups.

4-0 results are not always the same as a steamroll, the match can still be fairly even while the rounds are going in one teams favor. This shouldn't be a reason to do anything. 4-0 scores will always happen, even if you halved the division sizes. There would still be a skillgap between the top teams and the buttom teams of the top division. So the percentage of 4-0 scores would be unchanged, but the number of them would decrease as a result of the number of teams in the division have decreased.

The downsides I see to having smaller division sizes are:
- You have less different teams to fight against during a season, making it less interesting in my opinion.
- You remove teams that both want and can compete with other teams in the top division. Note that "compete with" does not equal "capable of winning against".
- It gets harder to get into division 1 and you might end up having division 1 be a kind of "bubble community" which is hard to access and don't associate much with other teams outside the division. I already find this partly true and I don't wish this issue to become worse by making the divison sizes smaller.
- Simply being in the top division is a big moral boost to some teams, which makes them work harder to get better so they can compete against the top teams in the season. It's something called incentive. Incentive to practice. This works and with time it will give you better opponents. As the seasons go on, the buttom teams of the top division will become better and better.
- I currently see more than 8 teams that "belong in division 1", as you put it, and it would be a shame to put these teams into division 2.

To be honest, I have a hard time seeing any benefits from this. I suggested exactly this system youre suggesting for season 1, but got convinced by bHack and haven't changed my mind about it after playing it. The large division sizes with groups system have only grown on me after playing it. More teams = more possibilities for upsets = more interesting.

However, if most of the lower teams of the top divison don't wish to play in the top division, then I can see a problem with it. But that is not the case on the EU side of things.

+1 wiry

The current divisons with one interesting game in 8 weeks is pretty bad.
It makes people practice less because and that lowers the quality of div one.

@Skuggan If you honestly only think there are one team in your group that can bring you an interesting game, then your perspective is really arrogant and ignorant. So you would want a division 1 with what? 2 teams? That is just silly.
Having larger division sizes doesn't make people practice less, that is just absurd and wrong.

Please tell me what teams you think will give us interesting games in group A. In total there are about 5 teams who can compete for the league.
Knowing this it would makes sense to have 1 group with 8 teams so you have a few dark horses and still fun games almost every week.

When you split the division into two equally separated groups based on skill, you effectively half the likelihood of even matches. Pitting the #1 seed vs the #16 seed is a lot different than the #1 vs #8 seed.

Also, unless there are no plans for future seasons, then being put in a lower division doesn't remove the incentive to improve, as winning your division gives you the chance to jump to the next highest one (via the up-down matches).

I agree with wiry. The current format has led to groups being super boring except a couple of matches (counting both div 1 groups).

You could group up all the top-tier teams and make a smaller division (premier division?) and if that results in few matches you could always make them play twice, sort of like in football leagues (home/away matches).

You can still make a play-off cup at the end with the top 4 clans or whatever. Gives objectives for the "dark horses" in div1, etc.

I like the change we applied last minute to the NA league and definitely consider that for all leagues in Season 3 as stated in the according news post made.

Nevertheless, I appreciate all feedback for both arguments, pro and con, before deciding on the next format.

I am in favor of the bigger leagues also. In our division we have 2 teams fold by the time the 1st week was over. So that was 40% of our games for the season out the window. There were also 2 teams I thought we would be pretty lucky to beat.

But to counter this, bigger leagues can mean longer seasons - unless we can make it 2 games per week? It would put a lot of pressure on teams to keep playing if they (for instance) lose their 1st 4 games in a 16 week season!

I think this has more to do with the seeding system in place before season 2.

When it was time for the teams that had not played in season 1 to play their seeding matches there were teams seeded high enough for Div1 that were struggling with Div2 teams. NeXuS for example. Nexus were still seeded above the division 2 line when the seeding games began but the team had not played actively for months. In practice they were not a div1 team anymore, they had fallen behind. I know at least one team that played vs them to get into Div1 which in reality should have put them in the midst of div2 from that result. There were also teams like Skeid and Cocorico who quickly played seeding matches that put them in div1 without beating the tougher teams of Div1. Precaching, Cocorico, Bounded/Emblem, Skeid and so on all had very good players in their roster when this was going on but they had no where near as much practice as a team as the Div1 teams from season1.

I agree with swalk when it comes to the incentive. Being in a tough group gives you loads of incentive to work hard to be able to compete with the teams in there. I understand what you're saying when you say that practice against hard teams is what pcws is for Wiry but if you're put in a group with teams you know that you can beat without much practice, how much work will you actually put into it? My team for example really tries to practice against better teams than in our group but it would be a lot more pressing if we were in a tougher group.

I think some people kind of forget that this league and the competetive scene as a whole is a work in progress. Seeding for example isn't as solid as in a scene where teams have competed for years with roughly the same lineups and so on. There are lots of new teams and teams composed of players from folded great teams without much practice together. This creates a real mess. The only way to untangle this mess is to just pit the teams against eachother over and over to see who comes out on top. We need to keep doing this until the seedings become more solid. Even the oldest teams in the ENSL don't have that many official matches under their belt. Most of the knowledge about how good teams are are based on guesstimations and will vary from month to month depending on who's in the team and so on.

This time around there were a couple of teams who might have gotten into Div1 without being fully ready and same goes for Div2 but how big of a deal is it really?
I think we just need to keep playing and it will sort itself out.

It's a big deal when you only have 2 good games in a whole season.

" but if you're put in a group with teams you know that you can beat without much practice, how much work will you actually put into it?"

This is the problem with div 1 brainmaggot.

Well, if as you say there's only 2 good matches in that season you would have to have a 3 team group in order to have all good games. Doesn't sound very interesting to me at all. It might not be very exciting to you to play teams that you'll most likely win against but it's very benificial to the teams facing you. You might say "well they can do that in a pcw". Yes they can, but in an official match both teams bring their members, no mercs, both teams will try to win their hardest and not mess around and it will most likely be casted so it can be analyzed afterwards. This is way more information to learn from for the losing team than in a pcw.

As I mentioned in my previous post every game is a game that solidifies the standing of both teams. If you think it's boring to play those teams just make sure to beat them hard so it's very clear that you're not on the same level. That way it's more likely that you won't face that team the next season. How it is now is not how it's going to be later on. Who knows, if for example 6-8 teams in div1 clearly stands out as on another level compared to the other div1 teams after season 2, maybe they'll make div1 smaller next season. It all depends on the the stats you get from playing the games. They just need to be played :P

Hey Maggot .. old Teachers of mine used to say: Before talking start thinking.

if you have 2 good games in Div 1 for arc for instance .. we can expect that the best team in the other div 1 group has 2 good games too .. which will make 6 good Teams .. WHICH IS A GOOD SIZE FOR DIV 1 !

and i personally feel it is more incentive to be in div2 and maybe soon be able to call yourself div1 than just not getting completly hammerd in div1 .. cause u will still say i am in div1 !

Make it hard to be the ebst .. ppl will strive to get there .. when you can be div1 without really being great it kind of loses its meaning !

at the moment it is like saying you are in the best austrian soccer division .. NOONE WILL CARE .. WE SUCK AT FOOTBALL !... if you say i am in the premier league .. well there is something to be proud of !

Greets !

Skuggan wrote:
"" but if you're put in a group with teams you know that you can beat without much practice, how much work will you actually put into it?"

This is the problem with div 1 brainmaggot."

I know it is. What I'm focusing on is that the seeding system misplaced teams in division 1 and that with another season of games it will be very evident if there is enough good teams to keep division 1 that big or if it's time to shrink it down slightly. ENSL tried to pit teams against eachother in seeding games to create good divisions but this time around it didn't work super well. It did a decent job but not a great one.

The other part I'm focusing on is that now that it's been done that way we just have to work with the cards we're dealt and perform as good as we can so that we can have better divisions and groups the next season. I agree that division 1 has some teams that should really be in division 2 and that some division 2 teams should be in division 3. I'm just convinced that if everyone plays their matches and performs as they should in them it will solve itself.

EisTeeAT wrote:
"Hey Maggot .. old Teachers of mine used to say: Before talking start thinking."
Seriously, what is it with you and constantly saying unnecessary things like this? If you think I'm saying something wrong just point out what's wrong with it. Bullshit like that just makes you look like an asshole and it has no part in a discussion like this.

"if you have 2 good games in Div 1 for arc for instance .. we can expect that the best team in the other div 1 group has 2 good games too .. which will make 6 good Teams .. WHICH IS A GOOD SIZE FOR DIV 1"

Wiry wrote: "It's a big deal when you only have 2 good games in a whole season."

The whole season includes the semis and the grand finals. That means it includes the other group. That is why I wrote that a division with 3 teams would be uninteresting. Wouldn't be uninteresting for the teams in that group but it would be uninteresting for the teams that are slightly below that and would like to try and at least steal some rounds.

It is hard to be the best. If someone is acting all tough and pro from being in Div1 in this season anyone and everyone can look up their results and see "Oh, 0-4, 0-4, 0-4, 2-2" (for example) and suddenly it's not very cool anymore. It's not reasonable to change groups and divisions on the premise that some people think they're awesome because they're in division 1 even though they're losing there. That's something entirely in the heads of those guys. It doesn't concern reality.

Your example is off. A better one would be to compare it to bragging about being in the premier league but losing all your games there.

What we're talking about here are real reasons as to why groups or divisions should be changed and you can see what I think about that topic in what I wrote above.

The divisions are slightly crap this season because there wasn't much data (matches) to determine who goes where and because the seeding system itself had a bunch of holes that let teams get into divisions they didn't belong in.

Both issues will be fixed with more matches. That means playing out this season.

I would still brag about playing in the premier League because just to get there means you did defeat a lot of quality teams .. would it not?

But please dont get me wrong .. i am definitly not wanting to change anything in Season 2 .. HELL NO .. it is what it is any change now would jsut screw up everything !

But i thinnk it is necessary to just think about ways to improve.. cause we obviously have sa situation that not everyone sees as GOOD!

So your suggestion with making sure seeding is being improved is very good .. no doubt about that.

I for one do agree for the first few seasons !

I also believe that at one point we should go to a place where a new Team will start at the bottom .. yeah maybe they will walk through some divisions but at some point i would like to reward constant teams that stay together work together . cause those are the teams that CARRY NS2 !

And so in the end i do believe once we have some sort of sorting we should abandon the group concept .. and do it like football leagues around the world are handled for instance.

Sure teams will lose players teams will gain players .. but a good team will find someone to replace a lost person and make him good for them maybe they will get slightly worse and another team slightly better .. which means we wont be able to predict everything .. WHICH I LIKE !

But hey as i said .. for now i just think we need to work on the current system .. whichever way we go something needs to be done.

Since when do you deserve to be in division 1 simply because you could cheese your way into the occasional round win? What kind of backwards retarded logic is that?

You want to stay in division 1 simply because of bragging rights when you know damn well you do not belong in it.

/drunk-wiry, but it's still the truth. Divisions are horrible in it's current state offering very few actual good games for teams that are competent.

It seems like there are around 6-10 teams that are both very high skill and very active compared to other teams. How about you make the top division an 'invitational league', with division 1, 2, etc. below that.

The league admins would decide each season how many and which teams get to play in this top division, it is not decided only by previous results or seeding matches, it can therefore take into account roster changes that happen between seasons, they can talk to the teams to see if they plan to be active in the next season, etc. This division could also have each team play each other twice, so with 2 games per week, seeing as the top teams tend to be more active than the lower teams anyway, and I think most people want to watch these top teams getting casted more than the lower teams.

I think this would solve a lot of the problems with the current system, where it seems the top teams are being held back by having the same schedule and format as the lowest teams. Top teams are really active, they play PCWs most nights, they might as well have 2 league games a week and just let the more casual teams duke it out for div 1 places.

Wiry, I said the teams slightly below the theoretical three top teams. Even with a small division (6-8 teams or so) those teams would still get great matches between eachother. It's also very likely that these teams slightly below the top ones would not fit into div2 so where else would they go? Start another 3 team division?

I'm not saying that stealing a round from the best team puts you into div1, I'm saying beating the crap out of div2 teams does.

"You want to stay in division 1 simply because of bragging rights when you know damn well you do not belong in it."
This shit again? I can't believe this is brought up - twice!
Who the hell gives a backwards shit about someone saying they're in div1? Everyone with any insight of the ENSL knows that the divisons are not perfect. More importantly, who gives a shit if someone brags about it? Why is it so important? It's just starting to look like you want to exclusive rights to say that you're in Div1 and not those guys. You can just show your match statistics, you beat them. I don't see the problem.

For the record, yes, I still also believe that the divisions are currently messed up. That is a problem. I believe it's relatively easy to fix for season 3 though and I'm confident the ENSL will make it happen.

Do away with divisions
Do away with groups
Just have all the teams set up on a big scoreboard
Based on present seeding initially
Team A has to play against a team within three places above or below them (matches determined randomly)
If you beat a team above you, you move up one place, if you beat a team below you, you stay
if you lose to a team above you, you stay, if you lose to a team below you, you move down one place
This way, over time, the actual skill divisions would precipitate
plus teams would be motivated to try hard and practice because they could actually move up
This is very drawing board, you'd have to come up with exceptions for the top teams etc so that they'd have more varied competitions

Sorry about formatting, c/p'd this from an IM chat.

frog

Do away with divisions
Do away with groups
Just have all the teams set up on a big scoreboard
Based on present seeding initially
Team A has to play against a team within three places above or below them (matches determined randomly)
If you beat a team above you, you move up one place, if you beat a team below you, you stay
if you lose to a team above you, you stay, if you lose to a team below you, you move down one place
This way, over time, the actual skill divisions would precipitate
plus teams would be motivated to try hard and practice because they could actually move up
This is very drawing board, you'd have to come up with exceptions for the top teams etc so that they'd have more varied competitions

I actually like this setup, though I'd organize like this:
- Can only challenge teams within three places above or below you
- You cannot rechallenge a team, unless their position has moved at least four positions since your last match
- Must play an average of one match per week over the course of the season (you can play additional matches to make up weeks where you can't play)
- However, you can't play more than three such matches in a week
- You cannot refuse a match from a team unless that team moves outside the three places before your match (you can still play the matchup if both teams agree)
- However, each team will be given a limited number of match request refusals each season in which they can refuse a match (the number will be determined based on the length of the season)
- The positioning of the teams only change if the lower seeded teams beats the higher seeded one (the teams then swap positions in the rankings)
- The final rankings of the teams at the end of the season will be used to seed an 'end of season tourny' (I think either an 8 or 16 player tourny would suffice)

There may be some need for additional rules to prevent end of season challenge gaming, but I think its workable.

Sounds very similar to clanbase ladders. I wouldn't necessarily be against trying something like that but the website would need a major overhaul so that making challenges could be done in a straightforward manner - and you'd HAVE to fix the email notification system, I think some leaders don't check this website very often, scheduling games can take forever in the current system. Maybe you could make it a rule that each team must have 1 player (but max. 2 to avoid hitting the 150 barrier) in the steam group before they can join the league.

Also - no one had any comment on the idea of an 'invitation only' top division? :-(

@YoungTrotsky: I think the Star division is a good idea! As far as the present format goes, I'd like to see this happen. It might even be able to work with my ladder concept. I don't know what "clanbase ladders" are, I was kinda thinking about aggressive-izing golf tournaments with my suggestion. If you have experience with clanbase ladders, maybe you could share details, also pros and cons from your perspective.

@ScardyBob: More thoughts for ladder:

Clans are assigned a group (A or B); on even weeks, group A must defend from a lower clan, and group B must challenge a higher clan, and the opposite for odd weeks. This forces teams to not try to shirk every match from below to maximize their upward motion.
Question: how do we deal with the worst team on the ladder? What will my team have to do when we should "defend" our position at the very bottom?

The end-of-season tourney would be a good idea; we could even use the results of the season to seed multiple tourneys, which would produce a high-ladder division, a mid-ladder division, and possibly a low-ladder division, to allow teams that perform well (while still not reaching Archaea-level) to see some tangible success. By doing this, we effectively graft the ladder system onto the current system, which should give us the flexibility to produce better in-season matches as well as post-season championships.

I think you should make a Gold Division taking the best 8 teams from Div1 and make a Div1 with the rest 8 teams. You dont have to touch anything more. The Div1 winners could go to Gold div if they win their up/down matches with the gold division, and same with Div2/Div1. Then we would see really good matches in Gold Division and 1st Division, with the actual seeding. Im agree with wiry at this, we are all waiting for this good matches to beeing streamed and we learn a lot from other Divisions.

And Swalk its not a problem this, you only are going to make an atractive division and good sstreamings that makes people see more matches.

I dont know if I explained well, but I think is a good idea.

We had that in NS1 Season2-onwards. It was called Premier division.