Suggestions for season 12!

[Lightweight!]

Hey guys, i saw ugri made a thread about season 12 and i thought im going to make one here. I am going to post my thoughts about improvements and suggestions which could be made for season 12.

a) Rounds beeing played:
I thought about a system that is made for 32 Players. I think 6 rounds was too much as we did it this season. I cut it down to 4 rounds with a distance of two weeks for scheduling. The top 16 are going to the quarter-final. In this round 4 games are beeing played in the following constellation. Example:

Pot 1: Rank 1, Rank 2, Rank 3, Rank 4
Pot 2: Rank 5, Rank 6, Rank 7, Rank 8
Pot 3: Rank 9, Rank 10, Rank 11, Rank 12
Pot 4: Rank 13, Rank 14, Rank 15, Rank 16

The groups beeing played in the quarter finals may look like this:

Game 1: Rank 1, Rank 5, Rank 9, Rank 13
Game 2: Rank 3, Rank 6, Rank 11, Rank 16

The system behind this is that it is worth to play your best every game, because in the end it can decide if you get into Pot 1,2,3 or 4. For example a player from Pot 1 is going to play one player from every Pot except from his. I imagine the watchword as something like Worpex making little papers for each of the players and draw lots for, nothing big. After this, every winner of his quarter-final is making it to the final which is played with 4 players.

b) Points System:
Place 1 = 25 Points
Place 2 = 10 Points
Place 3 = 10 Points
Place 4 = 10 Points

I think this system would ensure that everybody would try to play for the win. There won't be any playing and laming for the 3rd place anymore as we have seen several times in this season. Rule 3.10b is staying with this rule (+1 points for the player with the highest score). I haven't made any thoughts about what we are going to do with TIES,yet, that includes people that will have the same amount of points (tiebreaker game?)

c) Map Pool: With a season of 4 rounds i think a pool of 6-8 maps should be the goal (4 rounds, quarter-final, final). The qualifiers are getting their own map decided by the admins. If we make a pool of 8 maps (like the actual season), then 6 maps are decided by admins. The other 2 maps are decided by a vote of all the players competing into the season from a pool of maps (lets say 8 for example) that are given by the admins. In addition to that the reward system is going to stay which means that every player that made it to Pot 1 can decide the map for his group. I don't know yet who is going to choose the finals map (admins?).

d) Scheduling: To improve the scheduling i thought about a additional rule for 3.20 of the rule book.
"If a player doesn't schedule his game within one week, the other players are free to agree on a time they can play. If the player who has not scheduled his game yet doesn't appear on the agreed time, he will be subbed and gets the score of 0 points. If he appears after 7 days and a time is agreed that he can't play, he is going to be subbed."

e) Disconnects: Here i would like to modify rule 5.30 which says: "In the event that a player or host disconnects before the fifth minute of a map, the map is to be restarted with the same settings (map and player’s races). Beginning at the 5:00 minute mark any player who disconnects during a match will receive a forfeit loss unless the remaining players agree to replay it."

We recently have seen that this rule can lead to misunderstandings between players (the game between duck,rain,walking and starshaped). If we cut down the time for rehosting in case of lags to 1 minute, there w'ont be any serious trouble on the game dynamics (like somebody who is beeing rushed and loses in those 5 minutes or if somebody who is sorrounded wants rehost). This only includes the case that somebody is having a big lag/delay dept by the host. The mark for disconnects can stay at 5 minutes i think, because those can happen.

f) Feeding: I think we could modify rule 6.40 which says:
"Feeding is not allowed in the FML league. Feeding can be considered as a player with no chance of winning a game giving either Items or large amounts of Experience to any other player in the game in hopes to give that player a better chance at winning." There was a game on market with y.zenchenko, duck and darkness where duck dropped a mask of death on y.z base to give him a better chance to win the fights against darkness, which was in the interest of duck. The part with "...as a player with no chance of winning " should be erased, because it means indirectly feeding is allowed if it helps you to win. In my eyes feeding is a big intervention into the game dynamics and it should be completely forbidden including items and units. Feeding just leads the game into a way that i don't want to see it and it is fraud for the 3rd guy playing who doesn't notice the other players helping each other with trading/giving items.

g) Personal Message Chat: The last thing that is flying around in my mind is a new rule i would like to add. I know we had a big thread and many discussions about that, but i want to write down my thoughts again.

I think about adding a new rule that prohibits PM chat in the game. There were many games in which people assumed two players of pre-teaming (eshan/walking, rabbit/walking, q-veta/renaud, just to name some examples). We could avoid those discussions when there just wasn't any PM chat in the game. I know that to peace with somebody is not teaming and in my eyes it is totally a part of the game. If you want to team with somebody for some time you can use the public chat. This would also avoid that the guy who is up to beeing teamed can prepare for those things and will surely not open big dicussions about pre-teaming, because he is going to understand what happened and why it happened, because there won't be secrets like with PM chat.

For now this is all of my ideas/suggestions for a new fml-season. I am starting this thread in the hope that our admins will have a nice pool of fresh ideas and suggestions they can have a look at and maybe we will find some of them in the upcoming season  . For the future of this thread; Feel free to post your ideas/suggestions also. You don't have to write it in the form i did. Discuss suggestions of other players in a mannered way and hopefully you gonna have some fun with this. Excuse me if you find some mistakes in my text, i know my english is not perfect, but i am trying to improve as good as i can. Last but not least, i want to say that our admins are making a great job doing all the stuff they do volentarily  . So far from me! 

[FML|Renaud]

I did not read yet, but i already love you for adding colors, and separating it into paragraph

[FML|Renaud]

Round being played:  I agree that 6 was too long (it was better because we din't have a shit load of tie breakers, but it was still too long) going back to 4 sounds good

But I think I would still prefer top 10 instead of top 16

Point system:  I would agree with that(screw the noobs playing for 3rd!), but it might be hell combined with only having 4 rounds for the tiebreakers

scheduling; that's usually the case, except for players who tell us before hand "btw ill be afk for the first week" (at least i think... I don't really help with the scheduling :P)

disconnects: yeah... but then he could pull the plug do disc!  I have no ideals / opinion on how to fix that

feeding:  I am actually a big fan of feeding (I'm just that evil of an admin), especially since I won that 4h50 game by feeding some gryphon to lost's DR (forcing louis to stop killing my build and focus on lost, allowing lost to defend vs louis, and lowering my food to rebuild my hero).  And then you could argue that when a player loses a battle on purpose to look weak, its a form of feeding!

Personally I think we should only ban infinite feeding, ie feeding summon, pillaging an ancient eating wood... that kind of crap!
And maybe item feeding


pm: yeah... idk, my opinion on that changes every now and then

[w8man]

dont read all your posts... about point "b" - i think you right in half way, but that differents between player who leave in 15 minutes and player who play 3 way 6 hours and lost
 
i think its unfair a bit =)

[FML|Mage]

Nice job LW, I think that this could generate some new ideas.  I'm not going to comment on everything, just the points that I have something to add to.

The top 16 are going to the quarter-final. In this round 4 games are beeing played in the following constellation.

I've got to disagree with this.  I think top 10 is good, it gives a very big incentive to finish in the top 2, and then at 3 and 4 so you can pick the map.  Also, with 16 people making it that would most likely mean that half of those in the league make the playoffs, it seems too big to me.

d) Scheduling: To improve the scheduling i thought about a additional rule for 3.20 of the rule book.
"If a player doesn't schedule his game within one week, the other players are free to agree on a time they can play. If the player who has not scheduled his game yet doesn't appear on the agreed time, he will be subbed and gets the score of 0 points. If he appears after 7 days and a time is agreed that he can't play, he is going to be subbed."

Love this idea, barring a preemptive notice from the player saying they'll be out of town for the first week or something.  In this case it would be the players responsibility to pm an admin to let them know of the situation.

e) Disconnects: Here i would like to modify rule 5.30 which says: "In the event that a player or host disconnects before the fifth minute of a map, the map is to be restarted with the same settings (map and player’s races). Beginning at the 5:00 minute mark any player who disconnects during a match will receive a forfeit loss unless the remaining players agree to replay it."

Honestly I think the best idea here would be to get a clan bot.  I know there are a few problems with this (namely we don't have access to it), but it would prevent plug-pulling since it has an auto-save feature on it, and it would allow for the original spawns to be kept intact preventing people from claiming lag in order to get a better position.

[rygorych]

a) Don't care really

b) Yes, goddamn it.
Or at least make it 25/10/10/9. Suiciders who force out a player should be aware that they aren't gaining much.

c) Don't care

d) Don't care

e) I'd say this:

If you aren't sure about how good host will be, and are known for constantly whining and bitching about hosts' ping (hello Starshaped), you ask to host a practice game. Inside practice game, all players can click around for a few minutes and agree  that the host is good. If it is good, THE GAME IS REHOSTED by same host, and this time it's for real.

This is to prevent in the future

1) Walking rushed by Rain scenario
2) Starshaped wanting to rush someone and asking for rehost if noone is close spawn to him scenario
3) Host is bad and rehost is agreed, but players want to play from Save (then replay can't be posted = bad bad bad)
 

Correct me if I'm wrong, this should be loophole-free

f) Yeah, then let's outrule suiciding too?

The rule is fine as it is. Feeding is bad when you feed and leave.

Feeding to help gain advantage is fine, and I for one would like to see more of it, for example orcs and ud trading orbs or HU trading staffs. This is HUGE in strategic implications, but people are generally too lazy/too cautious about doing it.

I know I'll ask for pres staff to trade out of one of the HU in my semi game, be ready for it.


g) Agreed. I say this again and again, when one of the biggest PM abusers OF ALL TIME (OF ALL TIME YO) is asking for PM to be outlawed, something is up, mmk?

There is a scale of YAY FUN---------------------------------------------------------SRS WIN

I'd say FML falls neatly in the middle of this scale. PM is on hard fuckin' right. Get rid of it.

[L77]

Also need to emphasize the practice of pausing and asking an admin whether you should remake on lag/disconnects, in case someone gets rushed out and just leaves.

[Lightweight!]

@Renaud I know it is a big change to switch from 10 top 16 players going to the next round, but it would also keep the motivation high for those who probably think that after not beeing first in two games, because they still can win it. Player like maga and darkness who are usually hardcore teamed also get better chances of going to the next round. Once you are there everything is possible The current system of 10 players includes really the best of best from the season which can also be a good thing if you see it from another point of view.

@Ebo: The thing about making a test-game to check if everyone can play with the host is a good idea, thats gonna cost people like one minute and will prevent bad happenings.

@ Practice: Clan-bot would be the best thing if we could get one. I actually don't know anything about how to use them  . Why did you make a double-post? 

@ L77: We had a game on deadlock with DasE and Q-veta i think where it started to lag. They paused and 2 players agreed on rehost. DasE left it thinking there will be a rehost although the third player didn't agree for it. I think if there is a little more patience those situations could be avoided with just waiting until everybody agreed for it (waiting for admin can be a problem when there is none avalaible, players can make it by themselves).

[Q-veta]

I like the new point system, it would prevent y.z playing for 3rd after I rush him out!

[L77]

Yeah, he came within maybe two attacks with his bm from finishing me that game.

[FML|Renaud]

Yeah, he came within maybe two attacks with his bm from finishing me that game.

I think Q was referring to another game when YZ successfully got his 3rd place on Harvest of Sorrow

[L77]

He played for 3rd in both!  But we're all talking about different games.  I was referring to Walking and LW brought up another good example.  I think that Q/myself/yz have just played against each other too often.

[Ugrilainen]

I will try to make short answers so ppl actually read. I will detail later when it will be finalized.

1- 1/4 finals : this is the idea I support. I exposed it last week in the chatbox maybe you saw it.
Why? :
  actual semis are cutting the season too much. 8 players only are playing on a period of two weeks. The ffa community has to wait to much between two seasons.

  It favors the "Must-win" game mode I want to promote. Being top player of the season is good, 2nd is fine but shouldnt be autoqualifying. 4 1/4 finals will be very exciting. Of course top ranked get easier games following this format and top 4 chose the map :

1-8-9-16
2-7-10-15
3-6-11-14
4-5-12-13

2- 4 rounds : I said it 100 times, 6 rounds is too long. I tried to convince you guys and now that we lost so many players and got so many stakeless games, I'm happy more are agreeing with me. 16 players in playoffs makes the short season less a problem. You can reach rank 16 even with one missed games.

3-map pool : I think in the four rounds we need one 1 player map (Deathrose...), one 6 players map (Silverpine...) and two 8 players maps (Twilight, Market...). The chose of the maps can be done 3 by admins and one by players if you want. The "player choice" I dont really support it because players vote only for the map they know, ie ladder maps.

4-scheduling : we do that already even if not in the rule book. This is internal admin soup.

5- Disconnects : dont make a new rule for each game event. Duck should have waited for admin consent to restart. Pause the game, discuss with other players in game and admins on garena.


6- Feeding : the rule is clear and duck didnt break it. I like the rule the way it is. Once upon a time some human sent a water elemental to Plush so he could get lvl 6 FS to kill another orc mass towers. This was intelligent feeding and was agreed on as being a smart play. The only disallowed feeding is the one exposed in the rulebook. Y.z could have used the mask.

7- private chat : I'm against private chatting it but no consensus was found on the matter. Without Eshan in the league I'm sure it will less be a problem. Since he is gone i didnt see much issues. But I'll be glad to see it out.

8 4th place : Do the maths and see how many ties we would get this season. Remember that once again, tie breaking games arent an option. So most probably we would have to go by who got most 2nd/3rd place, hence promoting playing for 3rd. I dont like your idea.

[rygorych]

I don't understand the huge deal with ties.

To me, people not playing for the win is a MUCH bigger issue.

Resolving a tie is very simple:

Throw a dice.

[Q-veta]

Yeah, he came within maybe two attacks with his bm from finishing me that game.

That was unfortunate. I didn't mind losing that game because I made a few poor decisions. What I did mind was the other game where he didn't have just a Blademaster but 2 other heroes and a 25 food army.