Warrior General Games

+1 to wise.

I voted NO to the OP but would vote yes to Wise's idea. This is a great plan.

Originally posted by WiSeIVIaN
Hey hazy. I am one of those fellas that -1'd in the voting. Here's why. I'll try not to be too "tl;dr" but it'll be worth the read. Fwiw I agree that something needs to be changed at the National Pro levels, but the suggestion in the OP is absolutely not the way to do it.

The Problem: the whole point of this thread/suggestion in the OP is that natty pro leagues are not competitive and as such something should be done. However, in order to solve a problem, you need to looks at the causes of it, and not just try to tack on a solution without some critical thinking.

The Causes. Why do Pro leagues lack parity? It is a combination of a few things. Too many National Pro leagues/teams is a big part. The fact that hugely under-leveled teams are promoted to natty pro and have zero chance to compete is another big one.

Too many National Pro teams

There simply are too many Pro leagues to have them all be competitive. To illustrate this point I am going to look at the 16 National League conference champs from last season (WL promotees) and see how many games were either lost, or won by 60 points or less in conference (ignoring week 1). This will give a pretty lax estimation of the number of teams that are competitive in natty pro.

Competitive games
APL: African Predators 11/15
Canton Immortals 1/15
CPL: QCBC 6/15
Dallas Longhorns 11/15
EEPL: Black Hand GoW 10/15
Sofia Spiders 7/15
OPL: Devonport Devils 11/15
EEA 8/15
SAPL: Mayan Prophecy 10/15
Death Valley 8/15
SEAPL: New York Empire 9/15
Garudas 7/15
USAPL: Chicago Hedgehogs 6/15
ATKM 11/15
WEPL: Ice and Fire 12/15
Black Sea Squall 10/15
Demoting WL teams 16/16.

So if we add all the "competitive teams, we are left with.... 154 teams. Divide that by 32 teams in a league and we are left with 4.8 competitive national pro leagues. Since 60 points was damn relaxed as far as blowouts, I would contend that rounding down to 4 is better than having that ugly 5.

Making 2 "elite pro' and 6 "shitty pro" is a horrible way to solve this problem, and league reduction is a MUCH better way.


Underleveled teams promoted to Natty Pro who have no choice but to be uncompetitie

Lisbon Crusaders: http://goallineblitz.com/game/team.pl?team_id=5940

This team went 8-8 in Regional Pro Elite #3 last season, and lost in the first round of the playoffs 97-21. They were then promoted to EEPL this season. Their roster is mostly made up of d319 players that have boosted to L59/60. Up against teams of L72 players they have zero choice except to lose in blowout games. A lot of Regional Pro promotes are similarly underleveled teams who are forced to get blown out for a season or two.

d359 (which will be players at L64/65 to start the season) needs to be the absolute lowest level players that are promoting to play against L72's. Since the highest capped league currently is d279, teams then spend they d319 season in Regional Pro, and then promote to National Pro with a roster mainly made up of d359 players.

Adding another level actually compliments the reduction to 4 natty Pro leagues, because those other 4 leagues of teams will get thrown back to regional Pro. So instead of having 19 regional pro leagues, we add another capped level which'll keep regional pro at a similar number of teams.

And to anyone complaining about adding an extra level to the promotion system, please realize that your first season in National Pro you are gonna get absolutely reamed and have zero chance at a WL promotion. As such, this extra level would give you another competitive/fun season and take away an awful one.

This extra cap level would be d261-d320


Why I don't like the suggestion in the OP

Because all catch's OP is doing is making 2 more leagues competitive and leaving the other 6 to their current plight. It also does not attack any of the issues, but rather just looks like putting a band-aid on top of a gunshot wound.

Furthermore, the 50% team turnover in the WL is the result of it getting tacked on to the old pyramid structure, so its a bit naive to act like the 50% turnover as done with great purpose or thought.

If for some crazy reason we go to hemisphere leagues, those leagues absolutely should not have more team turnover (75% = retarded), and I'd contend that this is probably the chance to downsize the WL promotion/demotion so that it makes more sense, rather than creating another level with a retarded amount of promotion/demotion.


======My suggestion, which is supported by the causes of the current Natty Pro situation======

1. Reduce to 4 Natty Pro Leagues. Give them regional names that make sense. Keep each current Pro league name as a conference name. For instance, North America will have USA and Canada conferences. Europe is east and west. The last 2 leagues will be weird, but I'm sure someone besides DD can come up with a good name for those .

After s21, in each Pro league, promote/demote from WL like we have in the past. Then make up each new conference out of first the WL demotes to that league, and then of ALL playoff teams in both conferences of that league. So the new USAPro conference (in North America League) will be made up of 0-x WL demoting teams, and then up to the 14 (16 minus 2 in WL) Pro league playoff teams from last season. Fill in any open spots (if any) with some Regional Elite promotes.

With the non-playoff teams you need to demote them back to Regional Pro. A 1-time reshuffle based on both age, effective level, and past records makes sense. It might get a little messy, but will be great in the long-run.


2. For future seasons, you can either keep the current 16 WL promote/demote, or reduce it to 8 promote/demote (its the difference between each new Natty Pro conference champ promoting, and both the conf champ/runner up promoting. I'd contend that reducing it to 8 would be good for both WL and PL competition, but if you want to keep it at 16, that absolutely works with this idea.

Then at National Pro...

Step 1: Promote the 2 or 4 teams per league. (note you can keep the USA/EE/ect as WL team tags, except that correspond to conference instead of league)
Step 2: Demote any WL teams back to their original conference
Step 3: Demote bottom 4 teams from each Pro Conference. This will give 8x4 = 32 National Pro spots open for demotes (since WL promotes and demotes balance across all leagues)
Step 4: Promote the top 32 Regional Pro Elite teams (which will be better teams since they'll be higher leveled and packed with some former Pro demotes as well.

3. Make a new d261-d320 cap. This will allow (a) Higher leveled players for competition in uncapped regional pro, and (b) L64-65 minimum for the new National Pro. These are ages that players/teams can be competitive at.



And Bam, you actually have a solution that...
1. Solves your problems.
2. Makes sense.
3. Preserves the current regionalism of current natty pro leagues.
4. Gives you options for WL promotion (depending if you wanna keep 16 or make it 8 teams)
5. Makes Regional Pro more competitive as well.

+1 to wise is appreciate if you like this, since quoting and +1 would get a little long since I wrote a book. Also comments/critcizm on this is welcome.

(p.s. Can we please get DD to let us rename the league structure? If you put it up for vote, I guarantee 95% of users would rather not have the current confusing minor league name structure )

+1 to wise

(p.s. Can we please get DD to let us rename the league structure? If you put it up for vote, I guarantee 95% of users would rather not have the current confusing minor league name structure )

srs just name the minor leagues with a simple structure. Day 240 cap #1, would be easy for everyone to understand.

I did not vote in the original suggestion because I liked the idea but not the implementaion

+1 Wise

In regards to Wise's suggestion..it actually doesn't do a whole lot more than Catch's suggestion. Wise is going with basically 4 Nat Pro leagues and dumping everyone else back to Reg Pro. While that might help Nat Pro, it will make matters worse in Reg Pro.

Catch's (among others) idea would basically take the Elite Nat Pro teams into the 2 Hemispheres making that competition even better than Wise and then could add the extra cap Wise asks for by adding the feeder leagues if caps were applied and this wouldn't negatively affect the Reg Pro.

Either Idea doesn't work without some changes in the way the promo/demos are handled. There is NO way that 8-8 team Wise points out should ever have been promoted. There had to be other teams ( and I know there are because I can see them right now) that should have been promoted instead. So how does that team get promoted?? That's what needs fixed as much as any league layout.

Originally posted by beenlurken
Originally posted by Rage Kinard

if you go with 6 feeders

Colonial League fed by
South America
North America
Oceania



Empire League fed by
Europe
Asia
Africa

I am totally cool with that... but there is a huge group of WEPL, EEPL, USAPL and CPL loyalist that will vote against just to preserve their region. Why eliminate (yes you are combining... but in doing so you are eliminating their identity) some and not others? That is the attitude this would get.

What are the objections to keeping all 8?

Combining but not renaming would help imo. Putting the teams in alphabetical order when combining you could have:

CPL/USA
Africa/SLAP
EEur/WEur
Oceania/SEA

+1 wise

Originally posted by TrevJo
+1 to wise

He makes a good case about 4 leagues being better than 2. I agree that the system proposed by jdbolick and Catch makes for the best competition for near-WL teams but it creates a mess at the level below the hemispheres.


+1 to wise but change the 4 leagues to North/East/West/South. Regional identity is unnecessary.

What Wise said is a good point, but those conference champions would not be in the regular pro leagues anymore. They would have been playing against each other in the "hemisphere" leagues, or at least that's the idea. I think it'd be more relevant to look at the number of competitive games for the teams that lost their first round playoff games or didn't make the playoffs at all.

IMO stick with the six continental pro leagues and two hemispheres idea. For promotion/demotion we do this:

Teams that reach the conference finals in the hemispheres promote (8 total) to replace the bottom 4 in each WL conference (half as many teams demoting from WL).

From the Hemispheres the bottom 6 in each conference demote to the continents (24 total) and are replaced again by anyone that made the conference finals (24 total for the six continents).

For the Continents, it'd have to be worked out by someone who understands the clouds a little better than I do, but we demote the bottom 2 or 3 from each conference to regional pro (24-36 teams) and we replace them with however we do it now. There could perhaps be a demotion/promotion request system in place as well so teams that feel uncompetitive in the Continents can drop and those in Regional Pro can promote.

I don't think this is necessarily perfect, but I really do think it's the best way to do things such that the most amount of users are getting what they want from the realignment.

Wise is clearly wise.

I still can't grasp the fact that you can get to WL without winning a Pro trophy.. I mean, really, f@@@ the regular season anyway, right? It's about the playoffs anyway, that's the better of the better in each League even if 4 teams on each side are good then those 4 teams should be tops, if your team happens to take the conference title, hurray your in WL..

Now with this new proposed system, you can slack off, make the second round and get to WL, really that easy, 3rd and 4th place gets you to WL, okay.. On top of that, year after year, 75% of the teams demoting will be back and it will become a cycle, guaranteed.. Is that what we would like to do here?

I love Wise's idea. To make it not wreck Regional Pro though, you would just about have to install another Minors tier above National Semi Pro and cap it at 320. With 128 current Pro teams being filtered down into Regional Pro, you would just about have to get the youngest players out of the way to make it competitive for everyone.

If it's not about getting to WL, and maybe I am putting the League to high, then just get rid of it.. If it's about competition, then fix the promotion from RPL.. I just know teams are on the way up, they will be in the PRO's soon.. This does not need to happen right away, there are other issues and things that need to be prioritized.. Like new plays on Offense.. Competition can still be found in tournaments, and mixed with regular games and scrimmages, so there is no lack of competition.. Win your League..

Originally posted by Kirghiz
I love Wise's idea. To make it not wreck Regional Pro though, you would just about have to install another Minors tier above National Semi Pro and cap it at 320. With 128 current Pro teams being filtered down into Regional Pro, you would just about have to get the youngest players out of the way to make it competitive for everyone.

Most of recruiting is done before rollover of the new season, especially with net working and whatever, teams are pretty much in place ready for the season.. Then, run the team placement, easy right.. It opens suspense to not knowing where you will be placed and non networking teams have a chance to recruit...

+1 to wise