Billy44205

You have to change 10 to 7 and from 14 to 7 in the TLDR section since you changed the rules. Also, I see that infractions may lead to suspentions or team points deductions. How do you choose between the 2 punishments when you write that they both apply? You may need additional rules for playoff game scheduling and all that crap.

Not necessarily. I don't know why you assume said new teams must start from the bottom division because it doesn't have to be the case depending on how your division system works. Then it just means you don't really like the idea of divisions, which is fine. I do hope though that others will find value in winning the lower division tournaments.

I think subjective evaluation is fine for individual awards. I mean, even in real life advanced stats don't tell the whole story on players so I have very serious doubts that you guys would be able to come up with a satisfactory automated way to pick award winners. And before you (or anyone really) say that I'm not being consistent with my views about divisions where I want an automatic system, it's different. I like automated processes but I don't believe it is possible to accurately rank players. I'm perfectly consistent. Also the voting process can be engaging and fun for people. I liked the system from a few years ago where teams would appoint their nominee for each award and then team representatives would vote on behalf of their team. Also congrats again to Nordic Laser Blizzard.

I completely disagree with the idea of getting bottom division teams spots in the top division playoffs. I don't want to elaborate much on the subject but basically it comes down to this: For me being last in top division should be more valuable than being first in bottom division. Now, what I really want to say is a bit off-topic, but fuck that, I opened this thread I can do what I want damnit! So here are some random thoughts on what could be next on this website, divisions and others. I think there should be 3 divisions and 3 seasons of ECL per year. I also think there could be in parallel some sort of Cup tournament thing in a different format. I also think there needs to be at least one tournament admin per division. I also think webmaster stuff / coding and tournament administration stuff should be clearly separate. For instance Kenu should focus on developping website features as he's one of only 2 guys who can do it, and let Janbo and the boyzzz run the shows. I also think I'd like to see something like a Finland vs. Sweden (vs. rest of Europe? Meh...) super series. I also think the tournament schedule and rulebook should be available at least one week before the first game day in the schedule. I also think people should vote for end of tournament trophies, not because it would be a better pick than if the admins pick but because it creates investment in the league. I think there should be historical data of infractions and bans available somewhere, easy to find. I think I'm done for now...

I kind of agree with the "just pick one option and run with it" idea. I would even have the guys in charge bypass the community which for the most part doesn't care anyway. As for playing NHL in Summer, I am not too sure about that (although I have nothing to back up my claim...). I think people don't play NHL in Summer mostly because there is nothing to play for, and I think if a tournament was taking place from, say, May till the end of July the majority of people would play it. For example if we had 3 seasons per year. With an estimated 2.5 months for a tournament and one month between seasons, if the first tournament started October 1st the 3rd one would end mid-July. I think that should work for NHL17.

@pnordetun Is that 10 new teams full of brand new players or 10 teams made up of players who played the previous ECL? As long as players did play ECL you can work out a way to place them in divisions imo. As for new players, I guess the only way to go is bottom division. *** @tokFan Who knows, maybe the guys in charge had actually been working on it behind the scenes for months since I had talked with Kenu about it in depth before... BUT realistically (and disappointingly) I think nothing is ready / done and there will be one more tournament on NHL16 and it will be regular groups. As for discussing it during Summer, no one will talk about it then because I predict no one will go on this website when there is no tournament happening. We may as well talk about it now since I opened the thread.

@cHIIMEERa I'm mostly looking to avoid enormous beatings for the lowest level of teams that might be more inclined to leave the tournament because there is no upside, no silver lining, nothing to play for, nothing for them. The way I see things, even the lowest teams in the first division have something to play for despite taking beatings at the hands of NOS and such: they fight to stay in their division. And after all, so what if a team loses all its division 1 games? It will win most of its games in division 2 the next season to make up for it. If avoiding enormous beatings was the only thing divisions achieved, we'd be better off implementing some sort of mercy rule where if you lead by 6 goals the game is over, or something. Divisions do more than that, while not doing as much in terms of stopping blowouts, I'll give you that. But it's ok as that was never the end goal. We can also have different sizes for each division but I wouldn't go there as it probably involves personal judgment and I'd like to avoid that like the plague. So to answer your question, I had every division at about the same size of 1/3 of the teams registered to a tournament, potential beatings be damned.

@Sandstrom Valuable feedback. I don't agree that the bottom teams would be discouraged by being placed in the lowest division. I am fully aware that there needs to be at least (and probably at most too) 3 divisions so that you can be out of division 1 while not being in the bottom division because of egos, but the bottom-level teams do not have such egos usually. From my experience of EHL tournaments those teams are discouraged when they lose all the time, too heavily too often, and if group stage takes a long time it's an aggravating factor. I guess I'd like feedback from actual members of low-end teams. For what it's worth, it is those guys who originally brought up the idea of multiple divisions to avoid un-fun beatings at the hands of NOS / PoF and the likes. But to tell the truth, I'd be more worried about the middle of the pack teams that have a hard time coming to terms with the fact that they're not in the top third of the community. Those guys will be the ones complaining the most imo, but open enough relegation/promotion spots and I think the pill will be easier to swallow even for them. In the end the biggest thing to take from your post imo is that you can do groups within a division system. It may be useful if too many teams apply for ECL, I think.

I came up with another mechanism for a type 3 system: teams keep their ranking as long as their managing trio remains the same. For instance, if a team finishes in division 1, even if almost all their players are changed, if the 3 managers are still on the team that team is in division 1 the next season. So basically a team is its 3 managers and the rest of the supporting cast does not matter when placing the team in one of the divisions. Now you can add rules to transfer ownership of a team to other players from a season to the next (like owner can only transfer his position to a previous assistant, assistant can only be a player on the team the previous season etc.). This is a team-based system that does not require individual-oriented features. Keep in mind though that as a system protects teams more and more it also weakens the accuracy of team placement in division according to skill. At this point I sort of wish NHLGamer staff would choose an option (or do the mental work to come up with their own system) and run with it, presenting the finished product to the community. Speaking of dictatorship, the division system also makes for a whole new range of punishments for infractions such as preventing individuals from joining a division 1 team for a season or whatever. So for the little Trump's and Putin's out there, that's something to look forward to, I guess...

@debi_85 I'm cool with people who are on the side of I like groups better don't change anything. At least you have an opinion and you say it. With that said... 1 ) I don't think it's just newcomers who want divisions. It has been talked about since the old CH.net website in like 2013 or so, and on PS3 you guys have had an EHL divided between elite and the other one. Also, I don't agree with the fact that old timers are a bigger deal than newcomers. 2 ) I don't think you can speak for the bad teams and players if you are not one of them. I have seen enough bad teams quit tournaments because it wasn't fun getting killed all the time. Also, sure you may learn more from losing to good teams than beating bad teams but improving the level of teams is not what we're going for here. It's more about giving a more consistently entertaining gaming experience for the most players. 3 ) Divisions seem so obviously better than regular tournaments to me, I didn't think I would need to defend them more than what I had initially written. It's one thing to say "we don't have time for divisions next ECL", it's another entirely when you say "I like groups better". 4 ) I think there are too many people who are stuck in the old CH mindset, and lack ambition and vision for the future of this community. Why is 3 tournaments a year worse than 2? Why can't we play league-type tournaments and Cup-type tournaments in parallel? You know, mixing things up to keep interest high. Are creativity and drive to improve only reserved for when you play NHL videogames, guys?

Ok, so I will give 2 examples of a mix between team and individual considerations. The first example is what I had originally come up with. It starts with giving players on a team a common score at the end of the previous tournament according to their team achievements, and let’s call that the final score of a player/team. Then at the beginning of the next ECL when teams are formed you can calculate the average of the final scores of its members and let’s call this new team score the initial score of the new team. Now you can order the teams by initial score, cut that ordered list into equal parts and you have your divisions. So it is individual-based in the sense that teams are ranked according to the players in them, but the player scoring is team-oriented since players are only scored as well as their teams. That’s a system 3 with a bit of 2. The second example is a twist on the previous example based on the various reservations Kenu and the boyzzz had about it. The scoring is the same, but this time a team’s initial score is its previous final score. If new teams are formed or there is too big a roster turnover in an old team you can resort to the individual scoring thing to determine where this team should go between all your already ranked old teams. By the way the “too big a roster turnover” definition is TBD but what they talked about was either when too few players are the same as the old team or when the player scores give an average that is too far from the old team final score, either way there’s a threshold to set and then maths. By the way that’s a system 2 with a bit of 3… with another bif of 2. Math nerds may notice that if no player changes clubs and if the same teams compete from season to season the 2 systems are exactly equal. The real difference between the 2 examples shows itself when real life happens where the second one puts a stronger focus on teams, and for in principle it eases some processes such as good teams adding one good player from a bad team without fearing to be bumped down a division because of it. It is however an even heavier system than the first example which is already quite complex, and I personally I am not sold on the fact that those issues they saw at the limits of the first system can happen in real life. And I should add that the guys in charge, they were not too fond of the heavy mathematical nature of these systems so there’s that... Also, I’m only describing the core mechanics here, but there needs to be a few small features added to those things, like how to handle brand new players, how to handle people/teams taking a break from tournaments etc. For now I think we should focus on the big picture.

Thanks for the real talk. The truth is no one will talk about this matter during tournaments. It is never a good time to talk about it. As a result divisions will probably never happen, which I guess is well deserved for this community. But on the bright side, if no time is a good time... Then it means now is as good a time as any to talk about divisions! Yay! Also, even if next ECL is group-based it doesn't force you to retain your thoughts on divisions until next ECL actually begins, does it? By the way, I predict next ECL will not start before mid-April regardless of the format of the tournament. So much for "ASAP"... Anyway, you may as well post your thoughts on divisions in this thread now, which I opened because someone asked me. On an unrelated note... To the guys who liked the "simple puck drop to ice and play" comment by @debi_85 let me ask you this: If you really only need what basically amounts to the definition of EASHL or even drop in games, why do you play tournaments to begin with?

Hi nerds! Now that the first ECL tournament is behind us, it may be time to think hard about what to do next. I am of course talking about the DIVISION SYSTEM. Now I am not going to describe the system I came up with since I already did and no one cared. Instead I will present some leads as to how to approach these divisions, along with pros and cons I can see. I think it’s going to be a pretty long read, guys… *** Introduction: Why do we want divisions? (Skip this part if you already know why you want divisions) As you know, many teams want to play ECL, like 45+ clubs and at the start of ECL season 1 there were like 60 teams that signed up. This is too many teams to make one big league so we have to segment this lot into smaller parts, and there are 2 ways to go about it: · Groups: Skill evenly distributed between every group so good teams will face bad teams, common playoffs for everyone. · Divisions: Divisions regroup teams of equal skill so good teams will never face bad teams, playoffs for each division The main thing people have complained about in the past was lopsided, 9-0 type of games, because no one likes to take a massive beating, and even on the winning side the game tends to be less than interesting so everyone is left wondering “why did I play this?” and a division system addresses that point. It also adds benefits to the weaker teams that have no hope for common playoffs since they can have their own playoffs, and from there you can build promotion/relegation mechanics to give more people a taste of the real thrill of ECL. Now divisions are not the best thing ever, mainly because the impact of ranking teams (which you have to do for both groups and divisions, mind you) has a lot more impact than in a group based tournament. There may be a lot of butt hurt people complaining about how they belong in division 1 when they’ve been placed in division 2. If you’re an asshole you may even complain about how you’re in division 1, just missed the playoffs, and there are division 2 teams playing more ECL than you even though they’re worse than you. My take on the matter is that if you’re going to complain about those things you’re a baby. I think a division system is what most people would rather have. The only thing is how to define those divisions? As previously said, how you rank teams has an enormous impact in a division system. The mechanism by which clubs are placed into groups is of crucial importance. Without further ado, let’s look at some leads for this division mechanism and what they stand for. *** 1 – People choose their division. This is the easiest to implement. Basically the staff defines the number of divisions and then teams choose what division to register into. Pros are that there is no butt hurt as people play in the division they want. Cons are that there is the risk everyone may want to play in the same division and you can’t control the sizes of the divisions, or a bad team can’t be forced out of division 1 which sort of defeats the purpose of divisions. Also, no promotion/relegation and all that stuff. I think this only works if people are responsible individuals and not babies, so I think it is terribly impractical for this community. 2 – Team-oriented automatic system Teams are placed in divisions according to their results in the previous season. Pros are that it is based on previous merits, and it promotes long lasting teams. Cons are that in promoting long lasting teams it doesn’t account for new teams, like if you made a new team with the best player from every division 1 team, you don’t really know what to do with it or by default you put it in the bottom division where they will smash everyone and they’ll have the worst time playing ECL. Basically it probably can’t work on its own and you’ll have to compromise it with features from another type of system to account for real life. 3 – Individual-oriented automatic system This time teams are placed into divisions based on the average skill level of its players. Pros are that it makes for the most accurate placing of teams into divisions since the goal is to have equally skilled teams in the same divisions. Cons are that it relies on putting values on individual players and that can be VERY touchy (and ridiculous, cf. the “fantasy overalls” discussion in FINSeRe’s last interview article) and it does nothing to protect teams. Basically it is only as viable as the mechanism to define player values (skill or achievement etc.) so like the team-oriented system it needs something more to actually work. 4 – Hybrid automatic system(s) Let’s face it, options 2 and 3 kind of suck on their own. But if you mix them up you may end up with something that works well. For instance you can use system 3 and use a team-oriented method to assign player values. Or you can use system 2 and when the system faces its limits you implement features from system 3. I can’t really talk about these hybrid systems without going into boring details but the system I had come up with is a hybrid more or less described HERE and the guys in charge didn't exactly like it for various (WRONG! Probably...) reasons. 5 – Placing by committee A committee of people from this community is appointed (elected?) and after registrations for ECL are over they are in charge of placing teams in divisions. I straight up HATE this. I hate giving a bunch of people with all their biases all that power of decision. It is however something that can be done and I guess you can mix it up with system 1 so that if things go South when people decide for themselves the committee will decide for them. Appointing that committee will be a pain in the ass and no matter what I can already see people complaining all day about their decisions, questioning their integrity or knowledge of this player or that team etc. *** So these are some of the division mechanisms that can be used for the next ECL tournaments. Should emphasis be on players’ choice? Team performance? Player performance? Or should the guys in charge handle the division making and you don’t care what criteria are used? Are there other leads as to how to make divisions that do not fit any of the cases I presented? Is anyone of the more brainy nerds out there willing to propose a division system for us to evaluate?

Just an FYI to the guys who make new clubs these days and plan on entering ECL with them: new clubs kind of defeat the purpose of the division system that the guys in charge may want to implement. There is a way around it (and I designed it, #humblebrag) but the staff is not exactly fond of this way and would rather promote long lasting teams (even though that is not really practical, exhibit A: this thread! Just sayin'...). Obviously there is no decision set in stone as far as divisions for the next ECL's but yeah... Basically there is a higher than 0% chance that making a new club might force you into the bottom division of ECL... Maybe... I dunno. More on this whenever we start talking about this topic.

Guys I think you're arguing because the overall rating is not a detailed enough fake videogame rating. Can we get into more specifics please? Like what's that guy's hand-eye rating?? Most importantly what's that guy's durability attribute??? You know... "Advanced" stats and shit...

So... Like, half of that Nordic team is Laser HT guys from Xbox. Good to see at least some Xbox guys in the finals. Also, this giving each other videogame ratings thing is a lame gimmick in my opinion. But I mean, to each his own, you guys... The rest of the interviews is fine.

When I play I play with Deadly Phantoms. But I don't play often at all lately. I mostly haunt this forum.

By registering here you've literally doubled the amount of French people on this website. Nice! L'autre français, c'est moi. Salut m'sieur, et bienvenu.

The "dangerous" rule change makes it about the same as regular season scheduling (except default Wednesday turned into Tuesday? I dunno why). Did many people complain that you could potentially screw teams for 2 WO wins then? I don't think that rule is necessarily good enough as it doesn't address the real issue imo which is what to do when teams don't play their games (coz giving both teams WO losses gets you nowhere in the playoffs), but it's better than no rules at all. One other thing I would have an issue with, is how basically you have less than a day to schedule your first games if you work with if the first day of your playoff round window is also the first default game day. In this case, before Sunday evening it is possible you don't know who you play against, so you only have Monday morning/afternoon if you are to reschedule your first 2 games. I find this impractical and I'd rather set the playoff window as Saturday to Friday rather than Monday to Sunday. A playoff window should not begin with a default game day imo.

I think it was a general "you"...

The 8 player rule exists only to give more insurance that games can be played even when a couple guys from the best 6 are not around. Not being able to ice the best 6 guys from your team is not an excuse. I'm not sure why this was brought up but yeah...

They haven't advertised on the matter (and I complained about it before too) but the after Kenu, Lurkins and FinSere the other 2 admins are Janbo and Ranksu. You can actually see that here : http://nhlgamer.com/community/staff/ Also, the ghost of Kooffein is still there, I guess managing the ghost of the XB1 community...

I have never been very comfortable with scheduling in the playoffs even though I'm not sure what to do about it (other than hard schedules not changeable and everyone would just have to deal with it...). It's too easily turned into a shitshow because you can't really plan ahead contrary to regular season, and player addition restrictions make it extra hard on teams too. And on top of that shit cake, investigating these issues is probably very hard and time consuming for NHLGamer staff. So the situation is bad. As for the specific situation here, I'm not even sure who is more at fault since apparently one team couldn't play the first 2 days, then the other team couldn't play for 4 days and as a result both teams had up to 5 games to play on the last day of the 2nd round. It's not realistic to think a rule may force teams to play ECL games whenever they are at all able to play so the friday thing may make TUK look like dicks but they were in their own right nonetheless. Maybe there's space for a rule there but as I said, it looks pretty unrealistic and I don't see it. To be honest, if I'm the tournament admin, I either disqualify both teams for failing to finish their series, or I take into account the 3 games played as the full series and then penalize the winner with as many WO losses in the next round as still would have had to win to go through round 2 (so 4 - 2 = 2 WO losses here). With that said I am not in charge and I predict NHLGamer staff will cave and give the 2 teams more days.... Side note, if TUK left the game and didn't return, then they forfeited the game, right?

Thankfully we didn't need to resort to the 3rd tie breaker for A1 vs C1, that would have been awkward... So let me see if I got that right. For instance, if in round 3 you end up with A1, A2, C1, C2, but A1 and C2 are better than C1 and A2 respectively according to the tie breakers, the match-ups are A1 vs A2 and C1 vs C2. Do I understand this correctly? I have another slightly off topic question. Assuming a division system will be retained (I guess decision pending on that? EDIT : I didn't see the "more news on that this week end" thing, cool) how are you going to devise divisions from this group stage + playoffs? I am much more interested in the answer to my off topic question than the other one.

@Nispekt Actually the team disqualification procedure is in place precisely because this event was anticipated and had happened in the past, pretty much every tournament on the old website, the guys in charge just didn't see eye to eye with you about how to proceed. I do agree with your reasoning and I had intended for the team disqualification procedure to be voiding all games played, but Kenu did not agree and he has given his reasons in this topic too, somewhere. With the more numerous voices against it maybe Kenu and the boys will come to their sen...Errr, I mean maybe they'll change their minds about how to handle team disqualification. Kudos to the Making a Murderer reference, that show was amazing, and also very depressing. But for this case to really be like the Netflix show, it would have to be Lurkins manipulating the stats and Kenu accusing Pairii, and then Janbo wielding the banhammer on Circus team. Some crazy conspiracy shit like that.