Everyone's favorite topic.
But yes, this time we'll be talking about Playoffs in Wiimmfi League. To some this may only natural that we would be bringing them up, to some maybe not but we will cut straight to the point why we're definitely not going to stick to the current format:
- They make no sense when they happen within the division itself & 3rd place as well as 2nd place have an easy way of usurping 1st place
- 1st place's only advantages are: they skip Semifinals and they decide rulesets for Matches 1 and 3. That's it.
=> Problem with this is that 1st places in a division in several cases demonstrated that they dominated their division while the Teams that 1st place beat during the main season suddenly actually have a good chance of winning the season after all due to the lack of advantages that 1st place is being given.
- Scheduling/availability: something that occurs over and over again - due to the potential of having 3 matches people find it hard to come to an agreement quickly, it gets pushed back further and further and this is especially the case if both teams have people from mainly other continents (Europe vs Asia for example)
=> It can take some while until the season is truly finished by then due to the amount of divisions we have.
Anything we worked on?
For one there's this document which basically explains "conferences". Some of you may recall it and we're suspecting that this wouldn't gain as much support as we might hope but I'll go over the intentions here briefly.
- wanted to reduce complaints for seedings
- wanted a change of format
- wanted a format in which Playoffs make actually sense because they wouldn't be within one division only
Duration of this with 12 Teams in a conference: 17 weeks
Duration of this with 8 Teams in a conference: ~11 weeks
Keep in mind that 1) we banned transfers and 2) the "higher division teams" would play weaker teams while the weaker Teams might struggle against the stronger Teams and lose a lot (which isn't fun in the long run and certainly isn't as encouraging for some most likely).
This is why we probably wouldn't be implementing this unless for some reason, huge interest was shown for it or something.
Also props to those that actually bothered reading the document and trying to understand what we tried doing there.
Solution 1 we're offering is to just revert back to the old thing altogether: no Playoffs, just the 10 weeks main season like MKU currently does it
There's not much to say but...
- gets rid of long matches (Best of 3 potentially)
- all matches would therefore take the same amount of time (estimated: 1 hour)
- no usurping 1st place whatsoever
- no lack of advantages like it is the case with the current form of Playoffs
- the last weeks wouldn't have to be pushed back by multiple weeks before a division is finally over
Solution 2, if for some reason Playoffs are supposed to remain: top 2 teams makes playoffs + 1st seed only has to win once while 2nd seed has to win twice + 1st seed picks rulesets in both Matches:
- 1st place has a legit advantage finally just as it should be for a team that won their division
- time would be cut down considerably at any rate, especially since there is only 1 additional week after the 10 weeks main season
- less threats for 1st place in general
- 10-0'ing a division automatically leads to winning the division for that Team without any playoffs at all (optional? we'll see)
Now, this would be probably the time where WL Council are bullies and slam yet another forced change on the community but this time, you guys may vote on which solution you'd want us to do and keep in mind that we will not do the current one, out of the question.
We will be leaving up this poll for about 3 days.