Warrior General Games

Originally posted by jdbolick
Time and time again, what I said would happen does happen.

Things jd has predicted:

Auburn would win by 35 last night.

Obamacare would never be enacted.

Warrior General's second game would be Amish rake fighting.

Catch22 was really Corndog.

yello would have no less than 3 WL rings by S39.

OPC would be added before the 2nd WG game was released.

Peace in Iraq before 1-1-14.

Originally posted by Time Trial
So what's the problem with seeding the pyramid based on a series of ladder games? The only problems that I can see are that the season would be extended (though if you cut in to the preseason/offseason it wouldn't be much longer) and that you might not get more than 24 hours to gameplan because you won't know the results of the last ladder matches instantly.

I guess I don't really understand what you mean. Seeding the pyramid? There would be no seeding needed. Everyone would start from ground zero and teams would keep moving up until they got to the top league. That would be the seeding.

This actually is very reasonable imo.

Originally posted by bhall43
I guess I don't really understand what you mean. Seeding the pyramid? There would be no seeding needed. Everyone would start from ground zero and teams would keep moving up until they got to the top league. That would be the seeding.

Right, and I guess what I'm saying is that you would still have a pyramid of leagues, but the instead of winning your way up the pyramid and losing your way down the pyramid (which causes all kinds of promotion issues, like what to do with sold off teams and what to do with teams that aren't bought that are in the middle of the pyramid), you have a different way of establishing the top teams: the ladder.

You still have the "WL", but you don't get there by winning the PL and you don't leave by failing to make playoffs. Instead, your success in the pyramid last year determines your base ELO for seeding the pyramids the next season.

On days -12 to 0, you would play 6 ladder games, with your initial ladder rank and ELO based on your success last season. Success in those ladder games will move you up the ladder, failure in those games will drop you down.

After those games are completed, the top 16/32 (depending on the # of teams per league) teams on the ladder get placed in the WL, with the top teams being spread over each division. Those may include many of the same teams from last season, because they are elite, but it also may include other teams who went 6-0 against progressively more difficult opponents, assuming that their ELO rose enough that they overtook a team that was in the WL last season and whose ELO sank enough that they were surpassed. Likely a team that won a PL would have a starting ELO of approximately the same value as someone who did not make playoffs in the WL the previous season.

Then you place the next 32/64 teams in the next level of the pyramid, spreading the quality across each division, probably in a snaking fashion. Then you place the next 64/128 teams on the next level of the pyramid in the same manner.

This means that a great team that would normally start at the bottom of the pyramid, would in fact begin their season playing in the third highest level of the pyramid, which will give them a much better ELO going into the next season, especially if they are able to win their league.

Why would this work better than a pyramid-only promotion and demotion system? Remember, this only works for a Pee Wee or Instant L79-style league:

If a WL team (or any other team in the pyramid) leaves, there are currently only terrible options for filling the departing team. Seeding the pyramids using the ladder means that the next best available team (either departing WL team or just shy of normally incoming PL teams) gets the spot. This also means that every league will be seeded based on quality: no CPU teams, no zero cares teams, just teams that are about the same quality of team as yours (though it gets exponentially worse the further down the pyramid you go... this holds true for all pyramid leagues).

The general problem with a pyramid structure:

The quality of the competition gets exponentially weaker the further down the pyramid you go. At the top, you have the best (assume) 32 teams. If the pyramid gets fatter as it goes down, then the difference between the top and bottom team in the league is exponentially increasing.

Say there was even only 2 PLs, you are still seeding the 33rd best team at the top of that league and the 96th best team at the bottom of that league. The difference in rank between the top and bottom gets larger the fatter (the more leagues at that level) the pyramid gets. If there were 4 levels on the second highest level of the pyramid, you have the 33rd best team in GLB playing against the 160th best team in GLB. The downfall of the pyramid is that only one league will really get to experience top to bottom competition, the WL. It is a league structure that truely treats the rest of the leagues as bottom-feeders, and a league structure that ensures that the further down the pyramid you go, the larger the disparity in ability there will be between teams.

Ladder seeded leagues provides an alternative to this that makes competition closer throughout each league. Instead of a pyramid, the ladder permits a "tower" league structure.

The best 32 teams go in League 1
The next 32 teams go in League 2 } These two leagues would normally be one tier called the Pro or "hemisphere" leagues
The next 32 teams go in League 3 } The fatter the pyramid, the more the disparity between the quality of the teams
The next 32 teams go in League 4
The next 32 teams go in League 5
The next 32 teams go in League 6
The next 32 teams go in League 7

As you can see, that means that no matter how far down the leagues you go, you are still matched up against the 32 teams you are best suited to play against. If you manage to just destroy the competition in your league, despite the seeding, you will likely have a significant ELO boost going into the next season.



An alternative would be to have the initial seeding done by ELO via ladder matches, but then to have 4-6 more ladder games throughout the season, which would help with initial ELO seeding for the next season.

I still don't understand the concept as your ladder game is based off teams within 10 ranks of you. Why do you think that a dpride taking a year off from WL and coming back to start over would ever make WL under your concept? He would have to win a shit ton of games in order to even come close to the ELO that any of those WL teams would have. Basically it sounds like a bunch of extra clusterfuck nonsense to me. I have to win a bunch of Ladder games to stay in a league that I fought my way to not taking into consideration that I am playing a bunch of teams week to week that also fought there way there?

Originally posted by bhall43
Basically it sounds like a bunch of extra clusterfuck nonsense to me.

That's because it is.

Also see a team trying really hard in ladder games and beating a ton of teams ahead of them that don't give a shit about ladder games and that skewing the whole thing even more.

As far as promotion/demotion issues. Those are easily solvable when you stick to the rules that you establish from the start. The problem isn't the system. It is the way the rules are bent in order for some dumbfuck to win Reg Pro Competitive 4 with his full level 79 team while allowing another dumbfuck to establish himself as the bye week for every team he faces in a nat pro league.

Originally posted by Dub J
Also see a team trying really hard in ladder games and beating a ton of teams ahead of them that don't give a shit about ladder games and that skewing the whole thing even more.



Problem with the Ladder is that you would have to continually beat good teams and improve you ELO while hoping the teams already with a much higher ELO than you aren't winning games themselves. At least in just the regular pyramid style you could get away with losing some games and still turn it on when it counts. The only way you are ever gonna reach the level of a WL team starting from scratch is if you are Valhalla dominant and that would still take a long time.

excellent

What happened to the long post challenge? I was enjoying that.

Originally posted by bhall43
I still don't understand the concept as your ladder game is based off teams within 10 ranks of you. Why do you think that a dpride taking a year off from WL and coming back to start over would ever make WL under your concept? He would have to win a shit ton of games in order to even come close to the ELO that any of those WL teams would have. Basically it sounds like a bunch of extra clusterfuck nonsense to me. I have to win a bunch of Ladder games to stay in a league that I fought my way to not taking into consideration that I am playing a bunch of teams week to week that also fought there way there?

Right, assume you aren't going to jump from the bottom of the pyramid to the WL in just one season, even if you go undefeated in the ladder seeding. But going undefeated in the ladder placement for a team that enters with the base ELO would at least be able to get further up the ladder. Too many ladder games would create a "ladder season / league season / rabbit season" mentality that I think you would want to avoid. Too few ladder games would not help you determine where to place the team.

In Starcraft II, when a new season starts, your pre-existing ELO helps determine who your ladder matches will be against, and they only do a few "seeding" matches to determine which "league" you are in (though those leagues are still just ladders, so you can actually leave your league with enough success).

So with a pyramid:

1) How do you get around the problem of having the disparity in competition getting wider and wider the further down the pyramid you go? (assuming that your pyramid structure follows the typical:

1 Team
2/4 Teams
4/16 Teams
8/64 Teams

...structure?

Like I pointed out, the only league that has any consistency in its ranks is the league at the top. As you fall down the levels, the games aren't just getting easier because you are playing lower ranked teams, but they are also getting easier because the disparity in the ranks between the best and worst teams is so far. This means that the pyramid promotion system does not adaquately prepare you for more and more difficult teams.

2) How do you get around teams that need replacing when a team is sold off or gutted?

The structure for promotions and demotions in a pyramid leaves a lot of chance (next best team from which of the four+ leagues shoudl promote?) and doubt (should we promote one more team, or retain one more demoting team?) as to which team should move up if a team is sold that would normally have occupied a higher level of the pyramid. It also creates a ripple effect where a need to be filled at the highest level requires teams to be promoted in every rung below to fill each subsequent vacancy. A ladder system can take away any doubt as to which team should be promoted.

Originally posted by Dub J
Also see a team trying really hard in ladder games and beating a ton of teams ahead of them that don't give a shit about ladder games and that skewing the whole thing even more.



If you know that the promotion system is based on winning those ladder games, why wouldn't you try?

ah huh, go on........