BuzzerBeater Forums

Rats...I can't much argue with that.

see there they go again with "logical solutions"....
where's the fun in that?
We can't bitch, complain or rant about "logical solutions".....
it's just ruining the game for us "anti-social" types..... ;)

The difference between 5th and other places is often very narrow. I checked 20 leagues in USA D.IV (1-20). In 23 of 40 conferences, the 5th place team had the same record as another team, and the placement was decided on point differential:

9 teams, 5th and 6th tied.
2 teams, 5th, 6th, and 7th tied.
8 teams, 4th and 5th tied.
2 teams, 4th, 5th, and 6th tied
2 teams, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th tied

Add a possible imbalance between the two conferences and giving a team a chance for 5 extra games and possible promotion, sitting home twiddling their thumbs, or 3 extra games and possible relegation, the decision process is somewhat capricious.

With only 1/4 of teams relegating, BB is going to have problems with bot build-up, so they should really use the playoffs as more of a process to rank teams, especially between the two conferences within leagues, and reduce the chance for the lucky playoff run for promotion.

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Possible formats:

6,7,8 from both conference play in mini-league of 5 games to determine 11th-16th places. Regular season games count 1, mini-league games count 3.

3,4,5 play in mini-league of 5 games to determine 5th-10th places.

1,2 play two rounds best of 3, to determine 1st-4th places. Or possibly make final best of 5.

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4 through 8 play 5 interconference foes, to complete 18-game home-and-home season to rank teams 7-16. Games against top 3 teams in either conference wouldn't be used for final record for placement.

1 through 3 play 3 interconference foes to complete 10-game home-and-home season to rank teams 1-6.
5 and 6 play best of 3 to determine 5th and 6th. 1 - 4 play two rounds best of 3 to determine 1st through 4th.

Best of 3 series could use Tues and Thursday, with Saturday if necessary.

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Some format that uses inter-league play, and international play for 1st division teams.

Great response...bet you timed out huh?

I tried to replied but the ad from http://www.yourdestinyrevealed.com/ blinking 5 times per second is too distracting.

I think the question to a large extent depends upon what you see as the goal of a season. Is the most important goal to ensure that the best team promotes? Is the most important goal to ensure that the playoffs are as exciting for everybody as possible? Is the most important goal to ensure that teams are not bored by a long offseason? Is the most important goal that every regular-season game is meaningful? Is the most important goal that teams who do well in the regular season get rewarded for their good play?

I think the most important goal is to ensure that teams are not bored by a long off-season. If you want people to continue playing, there has to be something to do. If they find that they can go a couple of weeks without logging in, they might go another few weeks, and then decide they can do without BB.

I think that you understood this, and this led you to compromise on the playoffs, with single game QF and SF, which reduces the chance of the best team promoting, and devalues the regular season.

I think that your mistake is to treat the playoffs as being goal oriented, toward choosing a single team to promote, and not look at it as an opportunity for a different format of competition. First, you are going to have to promote more than one team in 16. Otherwise you are going to have a horrible bot-buildup, and other teams are going to get frustrated at being stuck in a league and then losing a playoff game. Since you are going to have to promote more teams at least to replace bots, then I think the post-season should be more oriented towards ranking teams.

If you devote 3 weeks to this, you can have multiple 3-games series for the elite, using 3 dates per week, which will provide a more meaningful test, including team depth; while also having competition matches for other teams. There can be clear economic rewards for being among the elite. And the rankings for the other teams can be based on a combination of league and post-season play.

However, if we are getting both complaints that the playoffs are too long and complaints that the playoffs are too short, then we'll feel that the length is probably about right.

My complaint is that they are too variable.
0 games for 4 teams, 1 game for 4 teams, 2 games for 2 teams, 2-3 games for 2 teams, and 4-5 games for 2 teams. If you lay this out in order of place you have 4.5, 2, 1, 1, 0, 2.5, 2.5, 0

and because the reason they have so many teams make the playoffs

It is because they can make more money, and they haven't figured out a competition for the other teams.

I didn't propose anyhing like the NBA nor like a European-style soccer league. If anything it is more like the world championships in sports like hockey or basketball where teams continue to play for ranking even after league (group) play.

I personally really like your proposal. All teams play and don't have to set scrimages. Also, it keeps the playoffs short but interesting. I do not see a downside.

its not immediately clear whether there is going to be a bot build up problem.... depends on the avg number of users who leave per season...since 4 people get demoted and 1 gets promoted... bot clearance is potentially effective at the upper divisions where bot teams should quickly fall off of the pace....

i think that as teams improve this will continue to be the case... one possible fix to this is to reset the team when a team is marked inactive.. this would reduce the skill of those players back to baseline and there is no way they can survive for more than one season at that level.. they will quickly trickle down to the division where there are just newbies..

On the other hand that does require on order 2 seasons to really see that be effective (say for a D1 team to fall down to DIII), and if teams are going inactive by more than 3 per league per season in the upper divisions than i think this won't work.



Edited 10/10/2007 10:06:21 PM by BB-Forrest


Edited 10/10/2007 10:06:54 PM by BB-Forrest

in HT, the bot buildup is worst in those cases where there is only a 1/4 relegation. It is important to note that the qualification process will tend to select for bots in cases where a series has a large number of bots. That is, if the series has 4 bots, there is a pretty good chance that the bots will lose their qualifier and relegate.

The second consideration is not only the global amount of bots, but the local nature. There will be leagues with no bots, and leagues with 10 or 12 bots. It will take multiple seasons to clean out the league with 12 bot bots. And as currently set up, you can have one conference filled with bots, and the other having none. You might relegate a team from the Active 8 because they only beat 7 of 8 teams in the Bot 8, while some team in the Bot 8 might be saved because they beat so many as 1 of 8 teams in the Active 8.

I am not advocating qualifiers or any sort of intradivisional playoffs, but a simple, straightforward, and fair way to remove bots at the end of each season, and promote the most qualified active teams in their place.

Bots really have one purpose. They let people sign up at any time during the season. They shouldn't be considered much more than temporary place holders.

I was looking at HT-Cambodia. During the season, it finally filled up its series II.1. The team in first place wondered in its PA whether now that there were 8 teams, would they all promote to the first division together. It was perfectly reasonable assumption to make. I didn't want to tell him only one team would promote, and that 2 would actually relegate.

I'm suggesting that the playoffs be part of the method of determining which teams are promoted to replace the bots. The playoffs for the top 8, would:

(1) Determine which teams promote, regardless of bots above.
(2) Determine the teams which are most worthy of promoting if there are bot replacement opportunities.
(3) Introduce an interesting format that is consistent with real world BB (though just like we have a 22 game rather than an 82 game regular season, we have best of 3 rather than best of 7).
(4). Give a an economic bonus for finishing in the top 4.
(5) Give an incentive to winning more games, because of seeding, and the use of regular season record and playoff record for (2).
(6) Introduce more interaction between the two conferences, than simply 8 interconference games used in determining regular season records.

Competion for the bottom 8 would:

(1) Determine which teams relegate, or are least worthy of retention if there are a lot of bots in other leagues in the division.
(2) Filling the schedule, while the top 8 play a more intense competition.
(3) Providing games that the teams can be competitive at. If you have a chance to win each game it is more fun.
(4) Introduce more interaction between the two conferences.

Initially, it is going to be hard to build up rivalries. My team is on its 3rd owner this season. The most games by any current owner is 7, and it averages about 4, My 2nd game was against an owner that had his team a few hours before we played. If we are dispersed among 16 leagues it wouldn't matter.

Multi-game series will build rivalries.

If you want to build up rivalries, you might want to funnel leagues into a smaller set (eg. II.1 could be fed from III.1 to III.4), II.2 from III.5 to III.8. So when you promote, you might join some rivals from previous seasons. In HT, you see some of this between I and II, but rarely elsewhere. It was pretty much a freak that I promoted into the same D.IIII series both times. There might be negative factors with such a funneling process, if the different leagues become imbalanced competitively. Or maybe if a country only a few dozen teams, it might be better to stack them in 4 divisions with a lot of promotion from each divison to the next. If you have 1000s of teams, you need to use wide branches like the 1:4, but it might not be the best when there are fewer teams.

Bots don't add to the rivalries.

After a few seasons the bot cleanup will settle down. In the USA, I think there are about 50% bots in D.I to D.III, but even a seemingly huge number can be handled by on average promoting a second team from each league in a full D.IV. Or 4 teams from a 1/2 full D.IV which I think the USA has. So even in a somewhat extreme case, 12 teams would be retained in the D.IV series (with no relegation).