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LDX
04-24-2015, 02:14 AM
Hey there.

I'll try to be as short as possible, as the brainstorm tonight was hard on the mind. My playgroup wants to have a Magic League this summer, Legacy format. However, we're facing one problem: we have no idea how many people will show up to our regular weekly events. Sometimes, we could be 6-7, some other times (mostly for tournaments), 12-13. We need a system to find a balance between win ratio & skill vs participation.

We are trying to build around this issue. So far, we thought of this.

June
5, weekly event
12, weekly event
19, weekly event
26, first tournament

July
3, weekly event
10, weekly event
17, weekly event
24, weekly event
31, second tournament

August
7, weekly event
14, third tournament

Total of 8 weekly events and 3 tournaments. To win the league, you have to accumulate as many points as possible until a winner shows up. Weekly events and tournaments aren't submitted to the same rule. They give different amount of points all together. We want players to hopefully show at both events.

That means, a player winning all 3 tournaments shouldn't be able to win the league right away, but should have a very strong advance that only a few match in a weekly event could transform into a win.

On the opposite, a ''grinder'' in the weekly, having mixed results and lacking a few points, should show at a tournament because winning it could be a huge boost, enough for him or her to win the grand prize. This would help prevent a player dropping the league when he or she has no chances of coming back in the race.

With that settled, the first issue is finding the right amount of points for each event.*However, to even think of a solution for that, we must fix the*second issue: what kind of match making to use in the weekly events.*We thought of many:

Round Robin would be great as we could simply give points for every wins, but could cause some issue if someone had to leave early and a player was taking too long. A scenario in which a single player took one hour per match and had to play 7 matches would cause a line of player waiting. Some other might have to leave, and it would be unfair for them not to have a chance to face this player, thus making sure they get 0 points. I mean, someone could just slow the game on purpose. Of course, we could have a time limit, but then, the same thing happens after the delay. Having a judge telling a friend to hurry seems a bit harsh too, but I it was the best solution we had. We thought about draws, but I don't see how it would help anything. Even if you gave one point for a draw game, the same comment ''it's unfair that I only get one point, he slowed the game down so I couldn't win!'' would rise.*

Swiss pairing doesn't seem to work with less than 17 players, or so that's what I understood. I could be wrong. But even if it can run with 7- players, we don't want a top 8 round in our weeklies, we just want to play some matches, accumulate points, and move on. Someone would have to show me how it could works.

Random Single/Double elimination would just feel too much as a tournament event, and we want players to play all the rounds in a weekly.*

In other words, we were stuck with Round Robin by default. We had that system written as a draft, and need corrections on it.


2 points per match won in a weekly, so we can estimate between 8 to 18 maximum points for a single night.*
0 points per loss
0 points per incompleted match
no draws*


Tournaments are an other thing, but we ran some with success before. We had to use byes sometimes and had no issues with them. Always worked in double elimination. We could just add a flat amount of points depending on the standings:


First tournament
15, 10, 5
Second tournament
20, 10, 5
Third tournament*
30, 15, 10


Someone suggested that these numbers should be dynamic. Winning a 20 players tournament should be more prestigious than a 8 players one. He had on his mind, let's say, 5, 10 and 15 points for the first place of each tournaments, +2 per player participating. I haven't done the math and I need an external advice on such a system.

We know at some points we'll have to displease somebody but we want to have clear rules from the start so everyone knows what they're jumping into.

Oh my. Sorry, it's getting late, and I might as well stop now as it's getting really confusing. Has anyone run such a league before? What rules were you using, what was the matchmaking system? We're open to all criticism.

Thanks a bunch!!!

Karhumies
04-24-2015, 04:59 AM
How do you plan to run the non-tournament weeklies? If, instead of Swiss, you use just random pairings for every round but you have pre-determined the amount of rounds, that would make the scoring system relatively simple. For example, everyone plays 4 rounds, you give a fixed number of points for each win/draw/loss, players are free to join and leave between rounds as they please. This allows you to calculate the maximum amount of points per weekly (4 wins) and have appropriate points scaling to the tournaments so that the ratio of weeklies points vs tourney points is towards your liking.

EDIT below:

"Round Robin" implies everyone will play everyone during the night, which is not possible if players join/leave in the middle. Also, with 10+ players, 9+ rounds is just not feasible. Therefore, AFAIK, Round Robin is different from random pairings for each round.

Example:
Win 3 points
Draw 1 point
Loss 0 points

The "no draws" rule is IMO not good for the weeklies format.
1) Using a round timer is good for you
- It will help you estimate the length of the event
- It will help the players estimate when the next round begins
- It disallows combo players to play 20+ matches (well, up to the number of players attending, if you only allow games once per opponent, which is still more matches completed per night than any other deck type) in one night, which keeps the scoring in check. I am thinking of Oops, Belcher, Dredge, etc. here. Not limiting max. matches per night into a reasonable number means implicitly rewarding the fastest decks to complete a match.
- It will help players "practice" for the round timer in the tournaments, which will result in faster play and less matches going into time during the actual tournaments. Supposing that tournaments will have more rounds than the weeklies, this will result in the tournaments finishing more quickly than otherwise.

2) No draws rule will make people not want to join with Control decks, which will result in everyone comboing left and right. This is bad for the league IMO.

LDX
04-24-2015, 11:47 AM
These points seems very fair.

I only have one question, how do you manage an uneven number of player? What I feared with such a system is that one player might play one more game than the others to accommodate an extra player. Sure, that player would be drawn randomly, but if it's the same person, by sheer luck, every week, this person could end with 4-5 more games played than anyone, thus having more points.

Do you just give byes in these situation, and free points to the ''extra'' ?

Karhumies
04-27-2015, 04:49 PM
These points seems very fair.

I only have one question, how do you manage an uneven number of player? What I feared with such a system is that one player might play one more game than the others to accommodate an extra player. Sure, that player would be drawn randomly, but if it's the same person, by sheer luck, every week, this person could end with 4-5 more games played than anyone, thus having more points.

Do you just give byes in these situation, and free points to the ''extra'' ?

BYE = Free win seems like the most fair thing to do for the "odd player out". For a friendly league, the people are (hopefully!) coming to play and socialize. The guy who is "left out" without an opponent to play should be rewarded the win points for compensation of not getting to play/playtest/socialize during a round, even though he has showed up. Also, the BYE rule guarantees that no one gets to play "extra rounds" so the max points amount per night is not affected.

Also, maximum 1 BYE per person per night seems like a good rule to have. This guarantees that if a player comes e.g. for 4 rounds of league, then even if he/she gets 1 BYE, he/she is guaranteed to play all the other 3 rounds. So, if during all 4 rounds a BYE is given out, it's always given out to a different player -> 4 players get 1 BYE each during the night.