RPS Blood Bowl League - The many, many Divisions of Death!

[Heliocentric]

The Brain's Masquerade Ballers(Elf) -Vs- Heliocentric's Taxederm(Und)
It was a game with it all, gang foul, Elfy ninjaship, dead elves raised as zombies fouling his previous teammates and turns passing where no elves were left standing.

I admit my shoddy cage making cost me the first touchdown at turn 8, but I made it back after the heat wave gave the elves an excuse to take a break from the horror scene happening on the pitch. I wanted in a touchdown on turn 14 without much fanfair as the fans were all focused on the gang fouling, It was quality fouling too, in the last 2 turns only a Elf loner lineman dared stand back up and despite both myself and brain trying to ruin his career he ended the match with 3 spp, unfortunately the Ballers lacked the funds to hire him without the win bonus.
The Brain's Masquerade Ballers(Elf) 1-Vs-1 Heliocentric's Taxederm(Und)

That's right ladies and gentlemen, a draw. With 1 loss 1 win and 1 draw this season and finally getting skills on both of my Wights? I honestly feel that Undead might be the right team for me. I know they will piss me off in various ways, but I'll always have fouling. Calrennin Maltathina the new Pro Elf Zombie will surely be throwing inch perfect long bombs once he gets used to his new skin, so thats good news.

All in all it was a great season, 2 elves killed, an even spread of success and defeat and I am hopefully going to see some raised utility from my Wights now they are not skill-less. 4 of my players are recruits from other teams, I'm extremely rich and really, what more could I ask?

[Jarvis]

Ok! Pretty much everyone on day 3, couple of defaults, but not too bad, all told - get going with your third and final matches everyone, you have... 8 days (because i am slow at validating - too many players!)

Please don't default my game with kajo if it's not already been done, we should be good to game tonight.

[Screwie]

Hey Jarvis, I already checked with groovy about it - our div 3 has been given a bit of leeway as all four of us are having scheduling issues so no worries :)

[sketchseven]

Thinking ahead here ... if we stay in the same division once the season is complete, can we roll a new team and keep the same name/race? Thinking I might refresh the Longboatsmen now I have a better feel for the Norse types, although maybe sticking with it and just saving up for that second Ulf would be a better bet.

[ntw]

<snip>...Note: I brought up Fodder 5B as he broke his neck(-1 AG) 2 games ago, and I am trying to decide whether I can justify keeping him on the roster. He has no skills and only 2 SPP, would it be wrong to retire him and rehire a skeleton by the same name?

If you want to replace him whilst maintaining my highly complex naming structure, then he must be called Fodder5bb.

[Everblue]

Thinking ahead here ... if we stay in the same division once the season is complete, can we roll a new team and keep the same name/race? Thinking I might refresh the Longboatsmen now I have a better feel for the Norse types, although maybe sticking with it and just saving up for that second Ulf would be a better bet.

You already have two skill ups (including a blodging berserker) and the team is not really beaten up at all. I would wait and see what happens after your game against the dwarves. If you don't lose anyone killed or seriously injured then why not keep it on?

You might even win the division this season! A draw for me and Xenny and a win for you would take you into the giddy heights of division G...

[JayTee]

My superb form at rolling level ups continues; 28 levels over the lifetime of the team and I've not even rolled a single stat up :(

[groovychainsaw]

So, after last season's discussions (which were a bit late to have any impact), is there any desire to change the format of the divisions?

There's a lot of people here now, so ideas to simplify applications/changes etc. would be good as that is the most disruptive element. It owuld be great to move people over to the new season in just a day or two rather than the week+ it currently takes. A challenge league + spreadsheet would have been ideal, but we ruled out managing it that way as there is no ability for admins to default/reset games in there(?), which is an important feature for us.

So...we have to have even numbers of teams in each division, 4 is probably a sweet spot for each division to get people in/out quickly (6 man divisions are a consideration, but an early dropout would make a division less fun). We don't want to use cyanide's promotion system (as its solely done on TV in case of a tie! Shocking). So we still need separate divisions in some form. Any ideas? I saw the ideas for a 'shallower' tree of divisions, and I'm happy to consider that, but it may leave some people up against some big players fairly quickly, which is either fun/horrible, depending on what you're here for :-). Anyway, all ideas gratefully received, bring on your suggestions.

[Everblue]

My opinion (for what it’s worth as a newbie) is that I like the four team structure.

Can I suggest that one way to streamline the signup procedure would be to allow some players to run two teams if we don’t get an exact number divisible by four? The new teams should be rookies and would join in at the bottom of the league. They get removed in a later season if we have a number divisible by four.

[ntw]

<snip>...Can I suggest that one way to streamline the signup procedure would be to allow some players to run two teams if we don’t get an exact number divisible by four? The new teams should be rookies and would join in at the bottom of the league. They get removed in a later season if we have a number divisible by four.

That tends to happen currently when we are just a team or two short.

[ntw]

4 teams per Div is a good number since it makes the seasons tick over nice and fast, minimises disruption due to dropouts, etc. Also from an admin perspective, it is fairly simple to sort out the inevitable fixture issues which arise.

The obvious suggestion for a change would be to have 4 feeder divs each feeding the championships, but then how would we manage promotions and demotions from the champs?

The additional factor is the fluid nature of the Divs - we have varied between having about 7 Divs, up to our current highpoint (?) of 16 Divs

[Screwie]

Where is Jiiim's non-euclidean web of a division tree? I liked that. :)

The general notion that there are two ladders (with or without crossover in the middle) to the championship with X feeder divisions at the base is one I would endorse.

Oooh! I have an idea, heavily based on Jiiims' design. Fair warning, this one might be a bit mad:

---

The premise:

In place of multiple feeder divisions at the base of the table, how about a single challenge-based league?

The game schedule is completely open, even players in the upper divisions can have an use teams in the feeder. The best 4 teams each season that aren't controlled by a coach who already has a team in the upper divisions get promoted into the regular divisions, the four worst performers in the DoD get relegated to the challenge league.

(The league gets its scores reset at the end of each season of course.)

Pros:

This could reduce the amount of admin needed between seasons a bit, with less arbitrary activation and deactivation of lower divisions.

It would also allow rookie teams to get a lot more games in if they need it before advancing up the ladder.

Hell, maybe even use THE Challenge League for this? This would place that league in a greater context (and get it a bit more action too).

Cons:

One downside is the challenge league's lack of moderation, but while this makes it inappropriate for the upper DoDs this is not such an issue without a strict schedule.

Also it might all blow up horribly, with a particularly strong team getting into the lower DoDs at some point.

---

Anyway, brainstorm over. I've not given this a huge amount of thought and it might be utter balls so please, deconstruct and disagree at your leisure.

EDIT: Oh, one other suggestion from me: If we do change our format, perhaps start a new DoD thread with a new opening post? Kinda of a fresh start and an escape form this 266-page monster which the forum's search feature is ill-equipped to handle...

EDIT AGAIN: Here is the previous discussion regarding ladders, courtesy of Jiiim, Jolima and NieA7:

This is one potential to sort out our fiddling. USING ALL MY SKILLS OF GRAPHIC DESIGN



Still 4-team leagues, but the difference is that one gets promoted and two get relegated, like the championship is now. Two reasons that it might be better:
* The path to the championship is half as long so it won't take the year it would currently take to join the divisions new and win.
* The cascade effect of someone higher-up dropping out is less pronounced. At the moment if someone falls off the championship then you have to move 8 people to shore it up. In this one you'd only have to move 3 or 4.

Personally I'd like that there'd be even more movement between years, but others might not.

I like it. Maybe with a few more cross-overs so the two halves aren't completely isolated. (Edit: I think my image actually fails to do this, so some better graph or even one that switches between seasons.)

E.g.:

But that's not gonna happen this season. So for the current situation... I'll refrain from making any other suggestions and say that we should just go with ntw's plan. No suggestion would be entirely fair, so groovy will just have to try boosting Prester back up by two-three divisions next season.

Choosing the divs at random from a pool of going up/staying/going down would keep things mixed nicely, you could even put a block in to stop anyone facing the same person twice in a row - that way we can keep the non-euclidean structure without the Cthulian tentacles linking it all together. Even if people dropped out a bit late in the day it'd allow for easier re-shuffling.

EDIT AGAIN AGAIN: Tried to break up my gigantipost up a bit with boldening.

[ntw]

brainfart response to your brainfart post Screwie - it could be open to abuse. Personally I'd like to think that we have the cream of the BB players, none of whom would stoop to such desperate measures as match fixing or being overly picky with fixtures, but the possibility would be there...

[groovychainsaw]

I'm.. not sure about using a challenge league as a feeder, with say, 7 divisions in a tree above. It cuts down on admin, but I don't know if it might be a bit of a barrier to entry - in some ways its quite nice to play organised games against other new people in the lower divisions, rather than being thrown into a pot with lots of others. On the other hand, it lets you play more games if you want and build a team quicker. Picking the 'best' teams out of there would require some thought, too.

Other than that, 4 teams/div is definitely the sweet spot and is unlikely to change (unless someone can mathemagically prove a better system). Jiiim's non-euclidean tree is also an option, it would require some overhauling of our division structure, but would work ok. The only addition I would add is, rather than a 'web' of promotions/demotions, I'd rather randomly assign people to a division, otherwise I'd probably make a mistake, particularly if someone drops out.

[Screwie]

Promotion from a challenge-based feeder league would be strictly done on points - the "best" are those who have the highest score (and no other team currently active in the DoDs) since the last points reset, which should be every season. The scoring system takes number of games played into account and new/applying teams are most likely to be most active.

Building on Jiiim and Jolima's suggestion. NieA7 presented a good idea to save on the headache of criss-crossing promotion/demotion lanes - just randomise the promotion from the feeder leagues up the ladder. With 4/8 points of entry, anyone demoted to the feeders and later promoted would be unlikely to head back up the same path (or could even be specifically blocked from doing so).

I just edited NieA7's quote into my megapost above.

[squirrelfanatic]

I am with groovy here, a Challenge League format for entry into the Divisions would mean that you have to "qualify" for the real fun. Which wouldn't be fun at all. Also, such a Challenge Feader League could easily be dominated by teams that profit from lower TVs, like Norse, Amazons, Woodelves, Dwarves, etc. in comparison to more balanced teams. Sure, slower developing teams could stick around for a while and get their TV and skills up, but that would in turn mean that some coaches would have to stick around longer to advance and also that lower Divisions might see some pretty nasty matchups.

Therefore, I'd say that we go with Jiiiiim's/Jolima's suggestion, as extended by NieA7, which could be extended with additional Divisions at the bottom if need be.

[Janek]

I think it's fine as it is.

[El Cubo]

A couple of ideas, don't know if they're workable:

Could the feeder league be replaced with some sort of self-organizing bottom tier divisions? The idea would be that four coaches would organize their division by themselves after finishing, they could "attach" their division to the bottom of that binary tree that Jiiiiim presented. Then after the official season would end, these divisions would be merged into the actual hierarchy with winners getting promoted etc.

Another thing would be to increase the abstraction and form some sort of division groups where we'd have, say, 4 divisions, which would mean that there would be four groups. They would operate independently, and after a season, the winners of each league would promote and the losers would demote. The middle ones would rotate inside the division and get promoted if the higher tier groups would need more meat. These groups could have their own administrators and could operate pretty independently. This would spread the administrational work to several administrators. Would also mean a shallower league: well-performing teams could get to the top after four seasons.

[Everblue]

My suggestion - We amalgamate the current structure into Tiers. We currently have 16 divisions with 4 teams each (we don't have a division 5 at present do we?). That's 64 teams.

The championship stays as a 4 team league.
The top 12 teams become Tier 1
The next 12 teams become Tier 2
And so on, for 5 Tiers in total

That makes 64 teams (60 x 5 + 4).

Each tier is split into three divisions of four, and the admins assign the teams of each tier into a division at random.

If you win your division you get promoted to the next Tier. The championship is made up of the league champion from the previous season, plus the three divisional winners from the previous Tier 1 season. If you get into the championship but don't win the league you drop down to Tier 1.

If you finish bottom of your division you drop down a tier.

Advantages of the structure:
- Shallower than the current league with 5 tiers plus the championship (as opposed to 8 plus the championship at present)
- You can play against anyone in your tier, so you have the "non-euclidean" structure as mentioned earlier
- Should be easier to organise the divisions because the admins can put the teams of a Tier into divisions as they see fit - if you have a no-show or drop out from a tier, just bump up enough people from the tiers below.

Disadvantages
- Lots of circulation in the top division. If you don't win the league you need to wait a whole season until you can have another crack at it.

EDIT - With a challenge league feeder wouldn't there be a risk that the teams in the challenge league could avoid playing the bashier opponents? Could be harder for say a dwarf or *cough* chaos team to get lots of games. I know I'd certainly rather play against flings all the time.

EDIT EDIT - There' s not an awful lot wrong with the current structure, mind.

[boots468]

.... The only addition I would add is, rather than a 'web' of promotions/demotions, I'd rather randomly assign people to a division, otherwise I'd probably make a mistake, particularly if someone drops out.

Randomly assigning people (or trying to weight the divisions to keep a good balance of bashy and non-bashy) does seem like a better idea than a convoluted web of promotions and demotions, and allows greater flexibilty for drop outs.

One issue with this though is I guess it'd be top team promoted, bottom two demoted? This could lead to more dead rubber games and less of a feeling of climbing a ladder upwards. Instead of exponentially widening the ladder downwards, we could just double it from step three downwards, so only the top three divisions suffer having half their teams demoted. *(This would be keeping randomised placing once you're in a tier). I.e. Option B below rather than A.

a)divs_A.jpgb)Divs_B.jpg




EDIT * - seems very similar to that Ninja Everblue's, just with keeping Tier 2 as 2 Divs, and 4 divs per tier rather than 3.