Welcome to the European Championship League (PS4)

[MartindalexC]

If NOS takes a break and when they come back you have them play in lower divisions, your format is wrong imo. 

We are talking about detailed tournament specs right now but I would like to submit a general concept once more. I think divisions are cool but I would like there to be in parallel or for the last tournament or whenever, a big Cup open to everyone with many small groups and then a big-ass playoff tree. I think different formats will keep things fresher for everyone and I think  it's good for the lower teams to have a chance to meet the top teams in a competitive format somewhere. Kind of like league and cup format in football. 

I have also wondered about the possibibilities of doing a Finland-Sweden superseries or some kind of all-star game but I am not sure this community is mature enough to handle that, and also bu definition it is not for everyone so...

I'd be down for a GB vs anyone else series but I don't think we'd be able to get a team together , that said I do share your conviction that the community may not be mature enough for it, undoubtedly there are more than a few who would be more than mature enough for it, however those who are not will bring it down. 

[Billy44205]

- What will happen if a Division 1 team (or whichever level really) wants to take a break and not play for one season? Can skip one season? Will be dropped one division? Have to start over from the lowest division?

They loose their spot, the best team in the div 2 will get the position, its their choice to take a break. For each break you take, you get demoted one division.

You're basically forcing people to play. It's not a good idea, man.

[Billy44205]

 (This is where an individual player rating system would help immensely, kind of what Billy mentioned earlier however such a system would be extremely subjective and unreliable imo).

Do not underestimate me. I can make an objective system with my ideas and I'll prove it to you with an example. The numbers I use are only based on ease of calculation.

Imagine a 2-division, 10 teams per division, system. Also disregard trades or player movement during the tournament, just to make it easier. 

At the end of group stage/regular season:

-The players from the bottom 3 teams in div-2 get a -1 value

- The players on the top 3 teams in div-2 get a +1.

- The rest of div-2 gets 0

- The players from the bottom 3 teams in div-1 get 0

- The players from the top 3 teams of div-1 get +2

- The rest of div-1 gets +1

Now on to the new season. The value of a team is the average value of its players. If no player movement happens between tournaments, the top 3 teams from div-2 are promoted to div-1 and the bottom 3 teams from div-1 are relegated. If players move around, make new clubs and stuff, you can just calculate team values and the top 10 teams by this metric are in div-1. The values of players are reset at rhe beginning of every season.

Where is the subjectivity?

Now I'm not saying it is perfect, but then again I just thought of it. For instance, how to deal with teams taking a season-long break and in the meantime the tournament goes fom 2 to 3 divisions? More maths are needed but there's no point putting in the work when we're just brainstorming. I am not even saying it is a good concept, just it is not subjective.

[Nephenzy]

You're basically forcing people to play. It's not a good idea, man.

Seeing this as a "video game" fun thing were everyone can play if they want is actually one of the reasons that teams do quit, we had a massive amount of teams that quit and completely destroyed the standings in NHL14. This is a league and basically you have to play or dont be here. Otherwise play eashl casually, you will face the best teams there also.

Edited October 20, 2015 by Nephenzy

[Billy44205]

Seeing this as a "video game" fun thing were everyone can play if they want is actually one of the reasons that teams can quit, we had a massive amount of teams that quit and completely destroyed the standings in NHL14. This is a league and basically you have to play or dont be here. Otherwise play eashl casually, you will face the best teams there also.

I think teams quitting midway through a tournament and teams not taking part at all are 2 different things. And to be honest I do not believe that teams quitting midway through a tournament is THAT big of an issue, especially if you mitigate this already with divisions, loser playoffs, promotion playoffs etc. This is one of my more contoversial opinions but I have been thinking about it, I mean I had been thinking about it years ago with Kooffein and Mordarelefanten, and yes they disagreed with me but meh...

If a team quits, just void all their games. Make the rules clear, no one can complain. I found all the whining about that ridiculous back then too.

[gzell60]

Just create divisions from teams which are ready to play. E.g. we have a pool of 15 division 1 teams and 15 division 2 teams, but only 7 teams out of each division register for the tournament. The other 8 teams just stay within their division and don't earn any experience points/whatever.

For that system to work, experience points or something similar need to have a meaning of course.

Edited October 20, 2015 by gzell60

[Kenu]

(Insert Billy's example here)

But if NOS (Or anything team that is clearly good enough to be in Div 1, not just NOS) do decide to leave for a season, they should be put in division 2 to absolutely smash teams? 

I'd be down for a GB vs anyone else series but I don't think we'd be able to get a team together , 

You're basically forcing people to play. It's not a good idea, man.

Do not underestimate me. I can make an objective system with my ideas and I'll prove it to you with an example. The numbers I use are only based on ease of calculation.

 

Hey guys, please note the great MultiQuote feature that we have here at the forums. You can click the +-icon next to the Quote button to pick a post to be multi-quoted: 

When you do, a message will appear in the lower right corner, and you can click it when you have selected the posts that you want to multi-quote.

It's better to do that than replying to each quote separately.

[MartindalexC]

Do not underestimate me. I can make an objective system with my ideas and I'll prove it to you with an example. The numbers I use are only based on ease of calculation.

Imagine a 2-division, 10 teams per division, system. Also disregard trades or player movement during the tournament, just to make it easier. 

At the end of group stage/regular season:

-The players from the bottom 3 teams in div-2 get a -1 value

- The players on the top 3 teams in div-2 get a +1.

- The rest of div-2 gets 0

- The players from the bottom 3 teams in div-1 get 0

- The players from the top 3 teams of div-1 get +2

- The rest of div-1 gets +1

Now on to the new season. The value of a team is the average value of its players. If no player movement happens between tournaments, the top 3 teams from div-2 are promoted to div-1 and the bottom 3 teams from div-1 are relegated. If players move around, make new clubs and stuff, you can just calculate team values and the top 10 teams by this metric are in div-1. The values of players are reset at rhe beginning of every season.

Where is the subjectivity?

Now I'm not saying it is perfect, but then again I just thought of it. For instance, how to deal with teams taking a season-long break and in the meantime the tournament goes fom 2 to 3 divisions? More maths are needed but there's no point putting in the work when we're just brainstorming. I am not even saying it is a good concept, just it is not subjective.

The subjectivity for me comes because not all players are equal, lumping multiple players into one value is very slap-dash method of determining who's better than who. For instance take the last EHL tournament on Xbox. In that season Russian Rockets finished in 6th place, so each of their players would sit at +1 based off your model. Which is fine, shows the team as a whole is atleast 'decent', on the other hand it doesn't show any variance within the team, instead it suggests that all players are at the same skill level. A player who got 70pts in 26 games would have the same rating as one who 18pts in the same time span, how is that not a flawed model if you're trying to rank how good players are?

 

Say you were to adjust it to take into account points, goals and assists. How would you then differentiate play styles (For instance, one player who got 50pts could be a blue liner who gets a lot of breakaways, while one player plays the same position and plays a much more rounded defensively orientated game)? With the two contrasting play styles mentioned I personally would go with the latter player being more 'skilled', however then we get into who he's playing with amongst a whole host of other confounding variables.

 

There's a reason advanced stats are used by actual NHL franchises to judge a players worth, without that independent eye you're just seeing if a player passes an 'eye test' whether they are good are not, which is extremely unreliable. (Due to many many biases)

 

Now don't get me wrong, it is certainly possible, that said it would have to be so complex to take everything into account and hence would be very subjective unless fully planned with every variable accounted for. I'm talking time with puck average, average number of puck touches, average number of dekes, average shots for, average shots against... et cetera et cetera

 

It is possible I'm thinking way too much into it but unless you really go in depth, any form of a player ranking system would be at the base of it, unreliable and subjective.

 

Edited October 20, 2015 by MartindalexC

[Billy44205]

See the goal of my system is NOT to rank players. It is to put teams in divisions. "Subjective" does not describe my very much objective (as in, everyone would come to the same conclusions based on the definition of my point attribution) system. However you can definitely say it is not an accurate representation of player skills, which it was never meant to be in the first place. But do we really need an accurate metric for individual skill? I don't think so. My system includes a little bit of individual, a little bit of team achievement, and most importantly it is not fully accurate but fully objective.

Not saying that's the direction the tournament should take in the future. For all I know, the community might agree with the Synergy guys more and put all the emphasis on long lasting active clubs, or something completely different that no one has written yet.

[Dexrion]

But if NOS (Or anything team that is clearly good enough to be in Div 1, not just NOS) do decide to leave for a season, they should be put in division 2 to absolutely smash teams? Now don't mistake what I'm saying as though I'm defending teams 'taking breaks', far from it infact, however being so firm with the rules in this case will do more harm than good imo. 

Thats why I want division 1 to have a smaller amount of teams, so even div 2 will have good teams in it to, if you only have like 8 teams in div1, im sure there is more then 8 teams that plays very well  which will compete for promotion to div 1 which they wont "smash". And we should adjust the league for the big teams then?Just beacuse you are a "big team" you shouldnt cut the line, thats my opinion anyhow. I think there is a charm in that smaller team have something to fight for, even if its the promotion to div 3. 

And if you are taking a break for one season, prove you belong to div 1. If you take more breaks, why even attend the League in the first place? Talking about taking break is abit weird if you ask me. 

 

[Kenu]

I'm very much interested in this division idea, but if we say division 1 only has 8 teams - that means 7 opponents. 16 games and then the best 4 go to the playoffs? That's semi-finals already. I'm not saying it's wrong, but it's very different from what the community is used to.

I agree it's not optimal for teams to take breaks, but in some cases small teams might have 2-3 people that can't play for a specific amount of time and I think that's understandable. I'm not saying there needs to be a rule to allow that, but if divisions is the way we'd be heading, this is absolutely a thing that should've been discussed and agreed on up front.

Are you guys saying that the bottom 3 teams should automatically be moved one division down and the top 3 moved up, or did you mean they'd match-up (#1 vs last spot, #2 vs second to last and #3 vs 3rd to last) in a best out of seven to compete for the spot? My personal opinion is that it should be determined through these teams facing each other. An alternative to what I described above, it could be a group of 6 teams where all meet each other and you see how they rank up after that. The downside is that it would theoretically allow teams to help other teams by losing on purpose towards certain opponents, once they've secured their own spot.

 

Overall, I think this division thing is one that you either love or hate. It might be a bit complicated for some teams to digest. I think that it would definitely bring a lot of depth into the hockey simulation experience that we're trying to build.

Please note that no concrete decisions have been made regarding the format of future leagues and we're just as excited as you to see where these brainstorms take us.
I don't think it would be fair to start the ECL by placing teams in different divisions without giving everyone the chance to show us what they've got. Thus I think we should be using a more traditional approach for the first league and perhaps using the data we can collect from there to place teams into divisions for the next leagues (if that's what we agree is the best thing to do).

[MartindalexC]

See the goal of my system is NOT to rank players. It is to put teams in divisions. "Subjective" does not describe my very much objective (as in, everyone would come to the same conclusions based on the definition of my point attribution) system. However you can definitely say it is not an accurate representation of player skills, which it was never meant to be in the first place. But do we really need an accurate metric for individual skill? I don't think so. My system includes a little bit of individual, a little bit of team achievement, and most importantly it is not fully accurate but fully objective.

Not saying that's the direction the tournament should take in the future. For all I know, the community might agree with the Synergy guys more and put all the emphasis on long lasting active clubs, or something completely different that no one has written yet.

Ah my bad, I thought you were talking about a player specific model and not a team specific model. Regardless my point still stands, a team is the sum of it's parts sure, but if one part is a diamond encrusted piston then the team should be judged with that in mind and not lumped in with everyone else.

Thats why I want division 1 to have a smaller amount of teams, so even div 2 will have good teams in it to, if you only have like 8 teams in div1, im sure there is more then 8 teams that plays very well  which will compete for promotion to div 1 which they wont "smash". And we should adjust the league for the big teams then?Just beacuse you are a "big team" you shouldnt cut the line, thats my opinion anyhow. I think there is a charm in that smaller team have something to fight for, even if its the promotion to div 3. 

And if you are taking a break for one season, prove you belong to div 1. If you take more breaks, why even attend the League in the first place? Talking about taking break is abit weird if you ask me. 

 

But by having a smaller amount of teams you're basically signalling for a smaller set of games to be played, if so it means that teams could actually get demoted based on luck rather than actual skill. (Something which is a big no no in my book)

I never said we should adjust the league for big teams, my point was that parity will always be an issue with those currently involved and as such trying to achieve said parity will have a very tough job. As such, it would basically spit in the face of the struggle if you allowed a good team (I'm talking about a team who has come close to winning the 'div 1 trophy', something which will be a very very select group imho, although I ofc hope I'm completely wrong here) to take a break and have to work their way back up. And I'm sorry but such a team would 'smash' the opposition in the lower divisions. 

Yeah, everyone loves a good underdog story but the reality is that if you made the top division even more 'premier' (Something you are proposing by lowering the amount of teams in such a division to 8) only to have one of the teams to leave for a season, that team really would cause havok in lower divisions based on the fact that, a.) They are clearly a 'premier' team and b.) they've been practising against the very best each and every game day, raising their skill further.

The whole idea of taking a break is strange to me as well but it's still a topic that needs to be discussed and properly thought out. 

 

....

I don't think it would be fair to start the ECL by placing teams in different divisions without giving everyone the chance to show us what they've got. Thus I think we should be using a more traditional approach for the first league and perhaps using the data we can collect from there to place teams into divisions for the next leagues (if that's what we agree is the best thing to do).

Personally I'm not too fussed about how the promotion / relegation is handled if we truly do go the division route, I will say one thing though is that by having a playoff series between each divisions from p/r you will get the highest parity as those who are the best will stay up which is what we want imo. 

But anyway the main thing for me is that last sentence with the main word being 'data'. If we really go in depth with the stats and objectively measure how good players / teams actually are, it will help a great deal in making the league (/divisions potentially) much more balanced and competitive, it also gives people something to study when going up against them. Seeing in writing (albeit numbers) who's each team's best player would give every team the opportunity to properly prepare for each game, something I would welcome with open arms. How we make such a system would be especially difficult as I outlined in an earlier post, however I do feel we could do something with it if enough effort is expended into researching it. (I'd be more than willing to volunteer if need be)  

Edited October 20, 2015 by MartindalexC

[Billy44205]

An 8-team tournament is a bit small if you ask me @Dexrion. If you're gonna go with a promotion/relegation system you have to have 12+ teams per division:

8 teams make the playoffs coz that has to be a power of 2 and 16 is a lot.

2 teams don't make the playoffs but don't get relegated

2 teams get relegated

But we're getting ahead of ouselves I think, drowning in details again. I think we should agree on the really important things first, the core principles behind the tournaments. Who knows, maybe the simplest "2 leagues, choose where you wanna play" formula is the most appropriate and all this talk was unnecessary. I think that's how it worked in the previous multiple division tourneys on PS3.

@MartindalexC: If your point is that my system is not completely accurate I already conceded it while questioning the need for more accuracy. If your point is that there needs to be a better way to assign players' values in my system, that's cazy talk. Advanced stats? Come on now... And in the absence of such things your point would bring what you mistakenly complained about in my system: subjectivity.

[MartindalexC]

...

@MartindalexC: If your point is that my system is not completely accurate I already conceded it while questioning the need for more accuracy. If your point is that there needs to be a better way to assign players' values in my system, that's cazy talk. Advanced stats? Come on now... And in the absence of such things your point would bring what you mistakenly complained about in my system: subjectivity.

100%, I suppose my point being that in both systems they need to be completely carried out with a clear idea and result in mind. Half assing a job which will rate / rank teams and players will be subjective unless it's fully detailed.

 

In the case of my idea of rating individual players, yea it's a pipe dream at the moment and it very well may stay like that , however as with anything it's always worth exploring ideas before setting the concrete stuff down. 

Collecting advanced stats in the sense of their real life counterparts (Eg: corsi and fenwick) would be exceptionally difficult and would have to be collected by players from each team, possibly leading to discrepancies within the data as it becomes more and more inaccurate, however a dumbed down version may be possible, we'd need to just think of what that version would entail first 

[Billy44205]

I keep telling you "subjective" is not the correct word...

[tokFan]

I don't like the idea of divisions. To much administration to get it to work in my opinion.

My suggestion for a first tournament would be like this.

• 24+ TEAMS
  • 2 groups with 12 in each, or more
  • 16 teams to playoff and the other 8-12 to a loser playoff
  • Always best of seven
• 32+ TEAMS
  • 4 groups with 8 in each, or more
  • 16 teams to playoff and the other 8-16 teams to a loser playoff
  • Always best of seven

After the first tournament you should be able to seed teams that participate in the next tournament.

[MartindalexC]

I keep telling you "subjective" is not the correct word...

In theory, yes it is not subjective as its based on actual numerical quantitative figures, don't worry, I get where you are coming from in saying I'm using the wrong word. However in practice it will very much be a subjective model, no team is created equal, each and every team will always have something that makes them different from some else that will predispose them to do better against certain people and teams, which is why I think trying to dumb down such a complex range of factors based entirely on season position is ultimately subjective.

I mean, look at the standings for the NHL last season, by your system / logic the best teams would be the Rangers, Montreal and Anaheim by default, due to having a score of +2, whereas the team that won the cup would only have a score of +1. This is where the subjectivity comes in for me as you can't just lump multiple teams into one category and expect it to be fine without any criticisms.

Basically at face value it's not subjective as it deals in numbers, which is what I imagine you are focusing on. Whereas further down, in terms of detail, it is far from being the objective model you claim it to be, which is the aspect of which I'm focussing on. 

[Billy44205]

@MartindalexC : No no no. It is inescapably objective but also inherently inaccurate. "Inaccurate" is the word you were looking for all along. Also you don't know what system I can come up with since I never exposed it completely. Your real NHL analogy is invalid because of that and it also has nothing to do with the inaccuracy my system, which imo is very very much overestimated by you. 

I talked with the ghost of @kooffein (who by the way finds my ideas to be "a pretty awesome solution to the seeding issues we have faced in the past" and "brilliant", come at me bros *mic drop*) and I came up with an almost complete model so here it is and hopefully those of you who know how to count will understand it.

***

First, some numbers

P = total number of teams playing ECL.

A = number of divisions

N = P / A = number of teams per division

X = the biggest power of 2 that is lower than N = number of teams that make the playoffs for each division

Y = number of teams in promotion/relegation stage (should be a power of 2 as well, and probably best to keep it at 2 or 4)

Z = number of auto-relegated teams (I think it should be kept at 1)

(If you have followed up to now, you get that the numbers the admins have to choose are A, Y and Z. The others are automatically given by the number of teams registering P, and this is the end of any subjectivity anyone who knows what the word means might perceive)

What happens for Division 1:

The first X teams make the playoffs. 

The bottom Z teams are relegated.

The Y teams above them are in "1/2" promotion/relegation stage. 

What happens for divisions 2 to A-1 (say, Division T):

The first X teams make the playoffs of their division. The top Z teams at the end of playoffs are promoted.

From the remaining teams the top Y teams according to regular season rankings are in "T-1/T" promotion/relegation stage.

The bottom Z teams are relegated.

The Y teams above them are in "T/T+1" promotion/relegation stage.

What happens in Division A (the last one):

The first X teams make the playoffs of their division. The top Z teams at the end of playoffs are promoted.

From the remaining teams the top Y teams according to regular season rankings are in "A-1/A" promotion/relegation stage.

The bottom Y+Z teams are relegated... although I guess it's more like they're stuck. Anyway...

How promotion/relegation stage works:

Simple, it's a mini-playoffs between 2*Y teams, which is conveniently a power of 2 so that checks out. The top Y teams are promoted or stay in their previous upper division, the other Y are relegated or stay in their previous lower division. 

After ALL the tournament games are played:

Teams are given a ranking value that is between -1 and A. 

The calculation begins with each team having their value at A - the number of the division they played the tournament in. So Division 1 teams start at A-1 and teams from the bottom division start at 0.

The top Y teams from the Division 1 playoffs and the top Z regular season teams after them get +1 added to their value.

Promoted teams get a +1 added to their value.

Relegated teams get a -1 added to their value... which is actually a substraction... 

(Note: If for instance Division T team wins their T/T+1 promotion/relegation stage they don't count as promoted, Duh!)

The bottom Y+Z teams from the bottom division get -1.

At that moment, each player from each team that has played the tournament till the end carries the value of the team they finished the tournament with. THIS IS NOT A PLAYER RANKING, THIS IS JUST A CALCULATION.

Players who quit midway through the tournament get a -1 value, which is the minimum value any player can have. This is designed to prevent people from quitting. 

Now on to next tournament:

Shuffle team members however you like (in real life it will barely happen at all but let's say it does happen for ***** and giggles).

If there are brand new players, their value is 0.

The value of a team entering the tournament is the mean value of its members. 

Now you can order teams by team value and automatically assign them all to their divisions, even if the numbers P, A, Y, Z of your tournament changes.

At the beginning of the new tournament, all the tournament players have their value erased and all teams have their value erased. Players who take a break keep their player value until they play in a tournament. In the event that those players have values from a tournament with A divisions and missed a tournament with B divisions, a simple-ish proportional calculation can give their adjusted value.

Wash, rinse, repeat. 

***

This system at the very least works and is robust... as long as it is initiated. The trick now is to start it after the first tournament which we all seem to agree is NOT a division-based format. It can probably be worked out easily enough after the incoming tournament format is defined. 

Also the system seems like a ton to handle but it is actually quite flexible and requires the least amount of handling since it's all automatic after you define the rules of the game. If you didn't see the flexibility shine through my big-ass explanation... Well just take my word for it.

It's a little unfortunate that I went through all this because now if it is not retained I'm gonna be bummed out that I put in this work for nothing. Damnit.

Edited October 21, 2015 by Billy44205
correction: mean value instead of aggregate

[JanneK.]

I don't like the idea of divisions. To much administration to get it to work in my opinion.

My suggestion for a first tournament would be like this.

• 24+ TEAMS
  • 2 groups with 12 in each, or more
  • 16 teams to playoff and the other 8-12 to a loser playoff
  • Always best of seven
• 32+ TEAMS
  • 4 groups with 8 in each, or more
  • 16 teams to playoff and the other 8-16 teams to a loser playoff
  • Always best of seven

After the first tournament you should be able to seed teams that participate in the next tournament.

Hello guys!  tokfan's idea is clearly the best if you ask me. So many great teams, that it would be best to create a big ecl, like tok said. That is boring to play only for promotion in lower divisions. Ehl had elite and division, I think that is best solution. Maybe 20 teams in both?

If you would have ecl elite and division then it would be fun to play for "division title" and that way get promoted to elite. And elite teams would get best tournament for a while. 

Tok's idea is great for first tournament, after that it could be best to play division and elite.

This is only my opinion!

[MartindalexC]

@MartindalexC : No no no. It is inescapably objective but also inherently inaccurate. "Inaccurate" is the word you were looking for all along. Also you don't know what system I can come up with since I never exposed it completely. Your real NHL analogy is invalid because of that and it also has nothing to do with the inaccuracy my system, which imo is very very much overestimated by you. 

I talked with the ghost of @kooffein (who by the way finds my ideas to be "a pretty awesome solution to the seeding issues we have faced in the past" and "brilliant", come at me bros *mic drop*) and I came up with an almost complete model so here it is and hopefully those of you who know how to count will understand it.

***

First, some numbers

P = total number of teams playing ECL.

A = number of divisions

N = P / A = number of teams per division

X = the biggest power of 2 that is lower than N = number of teams that make the playoffs for each division

Y = number of teams in promotion/relegation stage (should be a power of 2 as well, and probably best to keep it at 2 or 4)

Z = number of auto-relegated teams (I think it should be kept at 1)

(If you have followed up to now, you get that the numbers the admins have to choose are A, Y and Z. The others are automatically given by the number of teams registering P, and this is the end of any subjectivity anyone who knows what the word means might perceive)

What happens for Division 1:

The first X teams make the playoffs. 

The bottom Z teams are relegated.

The Y teams above them are in "1/2" promotion/relegation stage. 

What happens for divisions 2 to A-1 (say, Division T):

The first X teams make the playoffs of their division. The top Z teams at the end of playoffs are promoted.

From the remaining teams the top Y teams according to regular season rankings are in "T-1/T" promotion/relegation stage.

The bottom Z teams are relegated.

The Y teams above them are in "T/T+1" promotion/relegation stage.

What happens in Division A (the last one):

The first X teams make the playoffs of their division. The top Z teams at the end of playoffs are promoted.

From the remaining teams the top Y teams according to regular season rankings are in "A-1/A" promotion/relegation stage.

The bottom Y+Z teams are relegated... although I guess it's more like they're stuck. Anyway...

How promotion/relegation stage works:

Simple, it's a mini-playoffs between 2*Y teams, which is conveniently a power of 2 so that checks out. The top Y teams are promoted or stay in their previous upper division, the other Y are relegated or stay in their previous lower division. 

After ALL the tournament games are played:

Teams are given a ranking value that is between -1 and A. 

The calculation begins with each team having their value at A - the number of the division they played the tournament in. So Division 1 teams start at A-1 and teams from the bottom division start at 0.

The top Y teams from the Division 1 playoffs and the top Z regular season teams after them get +1 added to their value.

Promoted teams get a +1 added to their value.

Relegated teams get a -1 added to their value... which is actually a substraction... 

(Note: If for instance Division T team wins their T/T+1 promotion/relegation stage they don't count as promoted, Duh!)

The bottom Y+Z teams from the bottom division get -1.

At that moment, each player from each team that has played the tournament till the end carries the value of the team they finished the tournament with. THIS IS NOT A PLAYER RANKING, THIS IS JUST A CALCULATION.

Players who quit midway through the tournament get a -1 value, which is the minimum value any player can have. This is designed to prevent people from quitting. 

Now on to next tournament:

Shuffle team members however you like (in real life it will barely happen at all but let's say it does happen for ***** and giggles).

If there are brand new players, their value is 0.

The value of a team entering the tournament is the aggregate value of its members. 

Now you can order teams by team value and automatically assign them all to their divisions, even if the numbers P, A, Y, Z of your tournament changes.

At the beginning of the new tournament, all the tournament players have their value erased and all teams have their value erased. Players who take a break keep their player value until they play in a tournament. In the event that those players have values from a tournament with A divisions and missed a tournament with B divisions, a simple-ish proportional calculation can give their adjusted value.

Wash, rinse, repeat. 

***

This system at the very least works and is robust... as long as it is initiated. The trick now is to start it after the first tournament which we all seem to agree is NOT a division-based format. It can probably be worked out easily enough after the incoming tournament format is defined. 

Also the system seems like a ton to handle but it is actually quite flexible and requires the least amount of handling since it's all automatic after you define the rules of the game. If you didn't see the flexibility shine through my big-ass explanation... Well just take my word for it.

It's a little unfortunate that I went through all this because now if it is not retained I'm gonna be bummed out that I put in this work for nothing. Damnit.

Okay fair enough, I can see why the word inaccurate would fit, for me however subjective fits better because of the fact that in the model you outlined, the final result would be very up to interpretation due to the nature of it. The model would be used to allocate teams based on skill, so rating them (Eg: giving them a number) based as a team and giving them all equal numbers (effectively skill points) is by definition, subjective. 

Overall you are rating teams, but indirectly you are rating the players making up said teams which my point. 

Btw, one person's anecdotal evidence doesn't make anything good, anyway, to the model detailed in the post above. 

 

 

My point still stands.

Lemme throw a hypothetical your way:

Say that a team in division 1 has a complete dumpster fire of a roster but has one guy who is literally Gretzky in disguise. Now this guy puts up an absolutely ridiculous amount of points in the regular season but because his team is complete garbage they get relegated. In your system, you indirectly will rank players because players play in a team. As such in your system they will share the same score (0, as they were all demoted from div 1 to div 2, so they started at +1, then were deducted 1 point so they will be at a score 0.). Personally that's not fair as a team could pick up this player due to the fact he's clearly good, only to be potentially moved into a lower bracket because the system thinks the player is bad. Now I see that at the end of every season a player's rank is erased, which to me brings up the question, why was it needed anyway? You may as well just rank teams and teams only, not allocating a label / number to the players involved.

Effectively my point is that your system will work as a club prestige kinda thing fine, but do not involve players in the same system concurrently as it in no way attempts to show player skill, nor will it. There's no need to involve rating a team as the sum of it's parts ("The value of a team entering the tournament is the aggregate value of its members. ") when it's parts are completely disregarded as being all equal. I cannot stress this enough, just 'casually' rating all players within a team as the same score is exceptionally flawed. (You may not be attempting to rate players but by rating teams based on the aggregate of the players, you are indirectly rating players)

 

 

[Billy44205]

@MartindalexC and I talked about our points of disagreement on Skype yesterday. We actually agree up to the team value part. After that Connor would rather a committee of people judged what the impact of player movements on teams, basically giving those guys a power to directly judge who goes to what division. Is that better than an automatic system without any human bias? I'll let you all decide. And by all I mean whoever still bothers to read all this nerdy stuff...

FYI, about that example of Gretzky on the worst team Connor used... I did the maths and as long as there are not too many divisions (keep in mind that it is likely that there will be less than 4 divisions) and not too many player movements (we're talking about most players on every team moving around, realistically it ain't happening) adding any one player has no impact on whether teams stay in their division or go higher or lower. So a division 1 team can safely hire that Gretzky guy and not fear getting moved to division 2 because of that. My system is even more robust that I thought. 

Edited October 22, 2015 by Billy44205
Added stuff.

[AndreasNo]

I haven't really followed the discussion but I've seen you discuss the division problem and my solution in first hand is to just let the teams decide which division they want to be in.

Hopefully enough teams select different divisions 

[Kenu]

@MartindalexC and I talked about our points of disagreement on Skype yesterday. We actually agree up to the team value part. After that Connor would rather a committee of people judged what the impact of player movements on teams, basically giving those guys a power to directly judge who goes to what division. Is that better than an automatic system without any human bias? I'll let you all decide. And by all I mean whoever still bothers to read all this nerdy stuff...

FYI, about that example of Gretzky on the worst team Connor used... I did the maths and as long as there are not too many divisions (keep in mind that it is likely that there will be less than 4 divisions) and not too many player movements (we're talking about most players on every team moving around, realistically it ain't happening) adding any one player has no impact on whether teams stay in their division or go higher or lower. So a division 1 team can safely hire that Gretzky guy and not fear getting moved to division 2 because of that. My system is even more robust that I thought. 

But what if - and I don't mean to trash talk your design, because I'm very impressed with the amount of work you've put into it - but what if the best players from 8 teams in the 2nd division put together a team? 2nd division I guess, no matter what their skill?

I don't actually question that now that I wrote it down, but I'll put this up for debate anyways.

The hypothesis I had in mind was that most teams - even lower ranked teams - often have that one good player. I guess they should still earn their spot before they could all get to the first division no matter how many points they accumulated during the previous season.

I guess the only major worry would be that a team can't pick up good players from the "minors" because their grade from the last season might way down their overall team grade. Then again it might help keep teams together, as the temptation for roster changes might be slightly reduced.

 

Sorry, I'm rambling on, sort of answering my own questions. I hope they stir up some discussion nevertheless.

[Billy44205]

But what if - and I don't mean to trash talk your design, because I'm very impressed with the amount of work you've put into it - but what if the best players from 8 teams in the 2nd division put together a team? 2nd division I guess, no matter what their skill?

I don't actually question that now that I wrote it down, but I'll put this up for debate anyways.

The hypothesis I had in mind was that most teams - even lower ranked teams - often have that one good player. I guess they should still earn their spot before they could all get to the first division no matter how many points they accumulated during the previous season.

I guess the only major worry would be that a team can't pick up good players from the "minors" because their grade from the last season might way down their overall team grade. Then again it might help keep teams together, as the temptation for roster changes might be slightly reduced.

 

Sorry, I'm rambling on, sort of answering my own questions. I hope they stir up some discussion nevertheless.

You are not trashing my design, only challenging it. It's not like other systems don't have flaws of their own too.

Anyway, if every best player from every division 2 team made a club I say it's not crazy to have them prove they are for real by beating the next division 2 tournament. But yeah in my system that new team goes in div2. At least it's all set in stone, coz if you're gonna judge where that team plays, div 1 or 2, how do you justify their inclusion in div1, probably at the expense of another team that was supposed to play in div1 before that new club was created?

Now you're mistaken about not being able to pick up a good player from a lower division because basically the guy's weight in the new team value would pull it down from, say, 1 to 0.85 which is still above lower division team values that are around 0. 0.85 and 1 are essentially the same result because it doesn't matter if your team is 1st or 12th in a 12-team division, they will both go to the same division. This is the very reason it doesn't matter that the values players carry doesn't have to very accurately reflect their skill and you shouldn't interpret them as such like Connor keeps doing. That, of course, is unless there is an enormous amount of player movement which will not happen anyway, and if there are many many divisions which also will not happen anyway.

Feel free to challenge my creation again and again. I reckon the more you challenge it, the more you'll realize it's the best

[selänne8]

I think one option is create two conferences, and sort teams someway.