Whats next for FML?

[FML|WorpeX]

Yeah, the people who didn't play in FML before were seeded by those who played on garena. The ones I knew from FML before were seeded based on what I remembered their skill to be. What kind of seeding would you expect from me? Should I have just magically known what everyones skill was? The scene had been dead for almost 2 years. The seeds were as good as they were ever going to get.

[Cheerio]

I realize that i'm not a player and therefore my vote should not/only halfly count as a vote. I voted for the classic system, because i honestly don't see so much of a difference in the games (between the old classic games and the swiss style from this season).
I don't see a great difference, but that could easily be because of the low amount of rounds, so that the better players didn't get their way to the top or something like that.

I was stupid enough to vote before reading all the comments and I agree with kruppe on all of his points. If these points (mainly a better seeding in round 1, I know it's hard, but it would bring the idea of the swiss system another round forth) wereto get implemented i would stand between swiss and classic without being able to choose.

Furthermore, i would also like to say thanks for the effort you all put into this:)

sorry if I shouldn't have voted:)

[Ugrilainen]

Yeah, the people who didn't play in FML before were seeded by those who played on garena. The ones I knew from FML before were seeded based on what I remembered their skill to be. What kind of seeding would you expect from me? Should I have just magically known what everyones skill was? The scene had been dead for almost 2 years. The seeds were as good as they were ever going to get.

You know how we use to seed : all admins vote and rank and here we go we have the seeds

[FML|WorpeX]

Yeah, the people who didn't play in FML before were seeded by those who played on garena. The ones I knew from FML before were seeded based on what I remembered their skill to be. What kind of seeding would you expect from me? Should I have just magically known what everyones skill was? The scene had been dead for almost 2 years. The seeds were as good as they were ever going to get.

You know how we use to seed : all admins vote and rank and here we go we have the seeds

You weren't even an Admin at the time.

[y.zenchenko]

Worpex, keep current system with more rounds (like 6+).

[FML|Renaud]

There is 1 problem with having more rounds, after 4 round with 50 player, it became hard to make it so no one would match up the same person twice (actually we had a few collision this  season).  So if we have 6 round, we will definitely have them.

So would you guys be ok with that?

[FML|red7z7]

There is 1 problem with having more rounds, after 4 round with 50 player, it became hard to make it so no one would match up the same person twice (actually we had a few collision this  season).  So if we have 6 round, we will definitely have them.

So would you guys be ok with that?

yes, i think rematching players is fine (and maybe even more exciting). with 2 other new players and a new map, the games will be very different i think. with this amount of ppl i think avoiding collisions is asking too much. i also think more rounds (5 or 6) is better because statistically the more skilled players scores will bubble to the top.

as for which system i prefer, i really like swiss system where players are matched on skill. but i think a few changes are needed to make the system better:

1) round 1 should be completely random (start each season with no assumptions)
2) 5 or 6 rounds total
3) subs can get +2 points for winning a game, 0 otherwise. (seksi's idea -- i think it would be good)
4) subs have to be around same points/skill level as who they are subbing for
5) only ever use replacements when one player quits the league or if for some reason there is 0 chance of scheduling a game
6) plan to have a tiebreaking week following the main season if needed. if 5 people are tied with 3 spots open, then have a 5 way and winner gets in. then have a 4 way winner gets in. then 3 way and winner gets in and youre done. chances of getting a tie are smaller with more rounds though too.
7) need some way to get players to schedule their games faster. honestly dunno how to do this but maybe penalty points after 4 days of no talking or something.

i think with these changes the system would be really really solid. as it is now the system is actually very good and weve had a great season so far with a great turnout.

also, seksi had some more ideas for a different way to do playoffs/finals that seemed really exciting when he ran them by me. ill let him tell yall about that when hes ready though!

[rsm]

The current format IMO is far superior to any others. The only flaw I saw this season was the fact some people couldn't make their first round (me), and my round2 was way to easy, giving me 25 points. If people throw their matches then they have an easy 30 points, although that is not a system flaw, more of hoping the players make the league better.

More rounds would make it better, and balance the standings a lot more. The rematching thing is a big problem, as i fear every human I rematch will suicide tank me ( for obvious reasons that most can assume.)

Prob would never happen, but make each match anonymous. Have the admins pm the 4 players a topic and to schedule/play on smurf type names. May give an advantage to smart players as they will figure out who's who by mannerisms, but it could prevent the well known better players from getting teamed out and require active scouting to see who the better players are.

Tie breaker system is perfect, playing for second is a part of the game and players should look at the standing before hand and adapt their strategies accordingly. I didn't and it almost made me not make playoffs. Pretty sure I'm alone on this so disregard this paragraph...

Oh and make the spawns on 8 player maps fixed so that one player isn't guaranteed to lose at the start.

[Slythe]

i also like the swiss system. with the experience from this season, we should be able to enjoy it even more next season.

about the pts-distributation: i see the point why 2nd and 3rd getting same points, although it could also be interesting if it is 15 and 10, then the winner could still get 25 pts for having a bigger difference to the 2nd.

Or keep the current and make the winner getting only 20 pts instead of 25, i felt like  a single win can boost ur points way too much while being a close 2nd two times would not pay off.

problem imo with classic fml format is the small amount of players. if u decide to do it like that, will be also fine but probably add a fml b or the open fml ( similar to fml ladder ? ) to give the remaining players more motivation to play and having  not just the option for bnet and watching replays.

a lot will be deciding also by the activity / signing /interest again.

a tournament like ft4gaming or koffa could be played on one day only ( most likeley sunday) for some big come-together and fun. maybe also as a promotion for ffa to the wc3players who are not so into it yet.

[y.zenchenko]

Good ideas guys. Esp. from redz, agreed with everything.

2slythe. More ponits for 2nd place can go to "playing for the 2nd" and that's no good. Current 25-10-10-5 is great.

I also wanna develop the idea of koffa or something like this. My thoughts:
- Tournament should be held in 2 days (Sat&Sun). What about 8-9 October (9am-2pm)? 2 rounds - Sat; Semi and final - Sunday.
- Need small prize (like 50$) to make more new people to come. I guess we can do that?
- Need special registration for this tour, and special page @ site with all players showed and seeding for rounds.
- hard effort from admin team.

p.s. I can make some advertising at russian cybersport sites.

[Ugrilainen]

to red :

1- "agree" to the point I think the very top 8 should be seed 1 and then it's random
2- dont agree but why not
3- subs having point is very bad, ppl will fight to sub to get points
4- we do that already
5- some crazy timezone players forced us to make replacement even if we dont like it.
6- too long and no point. As for this year, I still do not consider that messiah or seksi were tied with Humanstar at all. In sports when two team are tied, we do not make them play an extra round, they are untied by some other way according to the results (goal average etc...). This must be decided before the start of the season though. Also, this prevent players who claimed that lossboting two first round could flaw the swiss system by winning easier round after : if you play less top 4, you dont get in playoff in case of ties. Thats fair to me.
7- I have been the "scheduling admin" for a while. You cant force anyone to schedule fast (like in go in holidays 10 days so what?). There were a few slow schedulers this year (trance, duck, ocky...) but when you start to give penalty points to players, the friendly league start to be a little too much dictatorial if I may say

[FML|Renaud]

for redz!
1) I have no preference either way :S
2) Agreed!!  And i'm glad to see so many player with the same opinion ^^
3) This is interesting, however i'm afraid of favor-ism, what if two player are available to sub, choosing the sub will basically be giving him an unfair advantage.  And considering how often admin subbed this season, i'm even more scared!   So the "ideal" way would be to also have a penality if you lost... but then it might be hard to find subs... hrmmm this one got me thinking a a lot though.  However, like this season showed, if sub wins game, that means the entry point for the playoffs gets lowered, giving the sub a better chance of making it in! 
(thats sorta insentive to try and win)
4) We tried to do this, but some time we simply don't have the options :(
5) I don't agree.  Because of a case that happened a few time in the past, player a,b,c,d agree on a time, player d doesn't show up, we reschedule.  We approach the deadline, and the only time that works now, is good for a,b,d.  Player c got screwed over, because d din't show up at first.
6) I don't agree.  And your 5/4/3 player games mean we might have to schedule 3 times! (not every player would be able to stay for 5h.  But, i do agree that more rounds will mean less tie.  And we(ugri) figured another tie breaking system, we tested what would have happened if we used it this season, and i think we only had 1 two way tie
7) I agree.  But lets add 4 days of not making a useful post unless players has warned us he wouldn't be able too (for example dase told us he would be afk for the first 5 day).  And I added usefull, since at some point we had 3 player agree on a time, and when elessar finally showed up, his only answer was "new yorc"

I will now go and try to let that #3 ideal run a few time in my minds, because it is pretty interesting

[Ugrilainen]

SUBS

I wanted to detail more my explanations about subs.

Red proposition is in the spirit of "some sub do not really play for the win since they have nothing to gain" so let's give them 2pts. It is a bad idea because ppl would fight to be chosen as a sub but I wanna insist on :

1- SUBS have something to gain while playing

Subs play are chosen according to their rankings, so their opponents are direct opponents  for the qualification.
When a sub wins, 25 points are distributed to his direct opponents. If he is last, 45 pts are. You see the point of playing for the win?

In the subs this year some didnt got it that way : Murrock trolled in Darkness/Rain game, Seksi seemed to be reluctant to make his opponent lose points (!) and rebule said he didnt play serious when he got 4th in Dase game thinking he was just subbing. Why wouldnt you play serious if you can get points out of direct opponents

2- Sub choice


That's why the choice of subs must remain an admin's decision . Admins decides based on

- the will of a player to sub...
- his ranking
- does he has any interest on suiciding a particular player or not 

In my last game, Rain wanted red7s7 to sub for Elessar. I refused and made y.z play (with other admin agreement ofc) to respect at the best the 3 rules above.

We couldnt have put soneone like htrt in our game for example as a sub since he would have had an interest in seeing Rain losing over the 2 others players. That's just a theorical explanation of my point.

We just need to give up on sub who clearly do not get these facts, but in any case we shouldnt ever give any point to them.

[Ugrilainen]

About point 7 described by renaud, players clearly trolling are just kicked of their game. Elessar wasnt posting anything usefull until we 3 agreed on a time just to say he couldnt and asked us to play at crazy time in the morning. We can be firm sometimes in the best interest of the league :).

[Peregrine]

Red has really good ideas! Agree with everything except points for subs can be unfair like reno/ugri said. And more rounds but also with LESS total players = faster scheduling, higher level matches, more non-league players available to sub. So 36 or 32 players max with 5 or 6 rounds might really work well (play some palyers twice but thats not bad. Me and seksi had two games, both were very different.)

In the past seasons sub were usually not a problem, just find players who are known to play for win, and explain if they win, their opponents lose points. Guys like Murrock are known troll shouldnt sub ever