This is an idea that I thought of for the league. I ran it by stalkor and he said to post it in the forums. I'm not married to it, and want to put it out there for people to discuss.

I'll paste the email that I sent to stalkor and thh ASR League admins.

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Hey, I have an idea for the league...dismiss it if you like or run with it. The idea comes from professional soccer league in England (premier league, football league championships, Football League 1, football league 2 and so on.)

1. Make four leagues. A, B, C, D. Or more. With 200 active players you could hypothetically make 12 leagues (A-L) of 16 players each.
2. The league would still run on a monthly format.
3. Give people two weeks to get their 4 games (or more games even)
4. After 2 weeks, seed everyone with four games or more and hold a bracket tournament. There is still an incentive to play more games because the more points means a higher seed.
5. If each league had 16 players, then 4 games would be needed to determine a champion for each league. Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championships.
6. Sweet 16 and Elite 8 play during week 3; Final Four and Championships during Week 4.
7. Then, the top 4 from each group advances each month.
8. The eight that lost in the Sweet 16 would play each other to see who is relegated to a lower tier.

Advantages:
• Playoff feel every month.
• A real champion is crowned monthly for each league.
• Leagues won't be as crowded. Each would have only 16.
• People may be more active since it has a playoff feel.
Disadvantages:
• Getting 4 games in two weeks.


luvgiants

Bad idea for ASR League as it attempts against its fundations.



I think is great for professional or serious local leagues if you want an extra of motivation... but it would be awful in a worldwide casual league as ASR, the reasons:

A) The permanency’s 4 games deadline gets a 50% or more decrement (mouths have more than 4 weeks)... lots of kicked out people.

B) The bracket tournament part requires a lot of commitment.
- Playing only the chosen opponent instead of anyone free in your group
- Hard and too short deadlines for each of the 4 rounds
- Scheduling problems with world's different time zones

C) The amount of total games (even if theoretically could be increased) in practice will be drastically fewer (after week 2, you only play 1-4 games depending of how far you get), and that's against the very foundations of the ASR... play as much competition games as you can to become stronger. It has the side effect of limiting the number of games of the weak players and increasing the number of the strong players... meanwhile with the actual format... weak players need to play more games, and strong players less.

D) You reduced the number of participants to 16 for each league... that if you escalate it to 12 leagues is a lot of extra work for the admins due to the failure to appear of people (this is why the last group is only one big one)... when with only 16 players per league a full league system would be not only possible if not much fairer and much easier. And of course, more games.



However maybe interesting if you do it only for the superclass... as they are strong enough... this can be an extra of motivation, that they need for playing at least as much as the other groups.

I better answer in the topic than in the MP, in this conversation can be very useful other people opinions too (not just mine).



Sure... in theory is possible to play as much as you want... but in practice, to weeks would be a really short period for most of the casual players.

And for the weakest players it would mean 2 weeks with as much games as you can as they can get a good seed, then 1 the 3rd week with only one game... and some more the last one, if the don't want to fail.

It's a painful schedule for them, and for the lot of casual players that can't play all weeks (due to over work, work travels, holydays, etc...) if the miss the first 2 weeks, or for the ones that can't play more than 1 game a week).



I think is a great idea for some leagues... but it just don't fit the ASR League (its spirit is more about learning than competing).

I vote no!

I think you're missing that one of the key strengths of the league is a huge amount of flexibility re: with whom you schedule your games and when you schedule them. If you lose that flexibility, the league becomes much less valuable to everyone. I don't think a "playoff feel" would actually motivate people enough to overcome the difficulty of scheduling games with a few specific people in a two week window, so activity would fall. (Our experience so far has been larger divisions = more activity, always.) I'm also not sure why the league champions would be more "real" than the current division champions, who are all quite impressive.

Of course, there's no reason not to start your own league based on these ideas.