Draft League Rules

[TinCow]

That's a good point. Making battles Classic would level out the playing field further to make it even more of a straight skill contest, which really is the whole point of this League in the first place. Would the Classic battle setting be something that we should allow people to alter with the Deviation From Rules bit? As it stands now, that rule would allow players to override the Classic battle rule and use veterans in a battle if they both agreed to it prior to the match. That seems fair to me, but would it somehow make the results of the League as a whole less accurate?

[TinCow]

As per this post, I've recently noted some issues with the built-in league part of the utility we use. As such, it's not really good for what we want. However, we can easily still run a League by simply using a single ladder for each tier of the League, with a little extra manual organization (to be done by me) to link them together. This actually seems like a better method, as it allows us to utilize the greater flexibility of the Ladder system while still keeping the tiers and promotion/relegation aspects of the League. I've changed the first part of the OP to account for this switch over the ladder system plus manual organization.

The benefits from using the combination system are as follows. First, we can rank players based on either ELO ratings or win/loss, instead of being restricted to only win/loss. People seemed favorable to the ELO system anyway, so that's a good thing. Second, new players can join a ladder at any time, not just in between seasons. That will make it a lot easier for new people to join in and keep the pool of active players healthy. Third, we are no longer restricted to a pre-defined set of matches. Instead, players can play anyone they want on their tier while the season is in play. However, we'll need to decide a few extra things as a result of these additional options.

1) How often do we want players to be able to challenge the same person? I'm thinking that each season should be 1 month long, so maybe no more than once every week?

2) What kind of restrictions to we want to place on how challenges are made? There are two ways for players to challenge each other in the ladder system. First, Gamemasters can specifically set up a match between two people. Second, each player can issue their own individual challenge, which is open for ANY other player to accept. Essentially, the player sets a date and time when they will be online and ready to play. Anyone can accept that challenge, and a match will then be scheduled between them accordingly. This system can be used to arrange matches between players independent of the Gamemaster, as two players can simply work out ahead of time when they want to play, then the first player creates the challenge and the second player accepts it after it's been posted. There's another cool feature about the challenges though... I can actually make the name of the challenger anonymous until after the challenge is accepted. That means players will not know who they are going to fight, just the date and time. They will only discover the identity of the challenger after they accept the match. I'm not sure whether that kind of anonymity would be desirable, but it's worth thinking about.

A hybrid system might be fun too. Maybe allow unlimited challenges using the opt-in system where opponents can pick which games to fight, with the only limitation being the frequency with which two people can fight (once a week?). Then on top of that, allow each player a set number of straight challenges (2 or 3?) which cannot be refused. Those would be PMed to the Gamemaster, who would add the specific challenge between the two players. This would allow flexibility in challenging, while still preventing players from completely avoiding someone else who really wants to fight them.

[AMP]

Nice work so far :)

I think ELO will be better over wins/losses since not everyone is going to be playing everyone in their tier each season, this makes more sense anyway.

I would say maybe just allow people only to play another opponent just twice a season (two times best of 3). And a month per season is good.

Allowing unlimited challenges might be fine and same with straight challenges is a good idea, no dodging forever. :)

[TinCow]

Ok, I've updated the OP with a few changes:

• Switched it to classic battles as default, though the system allows use of veterans if both players agree in advance of the match.
• Made it clear that ELO ratings will be used to rank players.
• Added the Seasons rule to set out clear time limits.
• Added the Challenges rule to clarify how matches are arranged and detail limits on repeated games between the same players.

I have a few more questions that I'd like some input on before I start broadcasting this rules draft for more input from the general MP community.
1) Should the corner camping rule be extended to all red line camping? This is a CWC rule, and it allows red line camping if there is only one red line involved.
2) Is there a fairer method of determining the attacker/defender in Round 3? Whoever defends there will certainly have an advantage, and I'd like to reduce that advantage as much as possible.

Also, it seems like during the first season we should just have one tier. I cannot think of any fair method of picking which players belong in which tiers at the moment. Everything I come up with is going to have some bias in it and is likely to upset some people. So, let's start everyone off at the same level. After the first season, we can use those results to add the additional tiers and allocate players to them. From season 2 onwards, all new players would start in the bottom tier.

[AMP]

I don't think you need red line camping as well, just adding more restrictions means more people will try and throw the flag at sometime - he did this or did that. Corner camping I would say is good enough.

Well if there is gonna be attacker/defender then the 3rd match just means both are attackers, but sadly we might need the attacker/defender rule to prevent the tag your it. Maybe who has the worst kill/loss ratio total from both matches is the defender? Not sure..

As for where everyone starts at, of course everyone should start at the same tier, that only makes sense. :)

[00owl]

For the attack/defend on round three how about the person with the lowest elo gets defender?

[TinCow]

For the attack/defend on round three how about the person with the lowest elo gets defender?

That's an interesting idea. How about doing that when there is an ELO rating difference of 20 or more between the players? A difference of less than 20 means the players are pretty close to even, so giving the advantage to one of them might be a bit skewed.

Another option just occurred to me as well: weather. In SP, the attacker gets the option to wait on the weather conditions. Why not allow the same for the attacker in Round 3? Defenders tend to benefit more than attackers from ranged units in defensive terrain, so certain weather options would reduce this advantage and perhaps encourage the defender to camp a bit less. Combined with getting to choose the map, choosing the weather as well might even things up a bit more for the attacker and provide another strategic level to the battle. Thoughts?