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[Emeric]

I'd prefer:

King's Court
Throne Room
Great Hall
Secret Chamber

and "poor house" when 128 more players join the league !

[Davio]

Well, I can only play during the evening and if someone else in Japan can only play during his, that's going to be a problem. But since division 1 is going to be , all Holland, it's going to be ok. I just don't think we need to have these problems as much in lower as in higher divisions.

[-Stef-]

Thanks to everyone for so much discussion about the format.
I think I'll let the discussion go on for about three more weeks and then put it to a vote along the most sensible options.
Maybe 2-3 options we've heard so far, maybe someone still thinks of something clever in the near future.
Could be a second vote on the names of the divisions if people really want that (more suggestions for names welcome)

If I find the time to code some scheduling / results aggravating thingy that would be great because otherwise organizing it actually does look like a lot of work.

At this point, my personal favorite structure is still the original one. I really don't want 4 people to demote unconditional, because I think that's way too depressing for the one on the bottom of the rankings. Demotion becomes inevitable probably 3 matches before the end. I believe the people here claiming they would play on, and so would I. But the people not discussing the format so actively might be a bigger problem.

[Joseph2302]

Well, I can only play during the evening and if someone else in Japan can only play during his, that's going to be a problem. But since division 1 is going to be , all Holland, it's going to be ok. I just don't think we need to have these problems as much in lower as in higher divisions.

I completely agree, I would love to play people all over the world, but logistically it can be a nightmare. Playing in GokoDom tournaments, it can be very hard to schedule with people in North America or Asia, and I've ended up playing games at silly times like 11pm or 9am (I'm a student, so 9am is very early for me), because that's the only time we could play. So a European (or European timezone) group would be better, in my opinion.

[Watno]

Well, I can only play during the evening and if someone else in Japan can only play during his, that's going to be a problem. But since division 1 is going to be , all Holland, it's going to be ok. I just don't think we need to have these problems as much in lower as in higher divisions.

I completely agree, I would love to play people all over the world, but logistically it can be a nightmare. Playing in GokoDom tournaments, it can be very hard to schedule with people in North America or Asia, and I've ended up playing games at silly times like 11pm or 9am (I'm a student, so 9am is very early for me), because that's the only time we could play. So a European (or European timezone) group would be better, in my opinion.

I agree with 9 am, but how is 11 pm stupid?

[Monsieur X]

int this model
     A
  B     B
C C   C C
I think the best way is :
from Division A 3 demotion (#6, #7 and #8)
from Division B 3 promotion (#1 of each group and the winner of a match beetween #2 of each group).

Yes i agree with that. For me #5  stay in his division   and just  "one match decision" for promotion is attractive

[Watno]

I used to run something similar to this on BSW by the way, and also had fancy names for the leagues.
Some things you might want to consider:
1) You will probably not get a number of players divisible by 10, unless you cut off registrations at some point, which seems unnecessary
2) People drop out. In my experience this especially applies to people who are about to be demoted,  but anyway this will affect how many free spots there are for pro-/demotion
3) Consider having a rule to prevent people from delaying all games until the last week of the season, because that is likely not to work.

[Monsieur X]

Well, I can only play during the evening and if someone else in Japan can only play during his, that's going to be a problem. But since division 1 is going to be , all Holland, it's going to be ok. I just don't think we need to have these problems as much in lower as in higher divisions.

I completely agree, I would love to play people all over the world, but logistically it can be a nightmare. Playing in GokoDom tournaments, it can be very hard to schedule with people in North America or Asia, and I've ended up playing games at silly times like 11pm or 9am (I'm a student, so 9am is very early for me), because that's the only time we could play. So a European (or European timezone) group would be better, in my opinion.

I understand but on the other side, with lower divisions by regions we can have big differences of levels and make more or less competitive  divisons.
for example i saw during the country tournament there were 2 USA and Japon teams with very good players and with a lot of substitutes.
France and Belgium needed to play both to have 4 players!

I think the better would be to sign up for this dominion league and see next knowing how many players of each "region" will play...

And if the players who are demoting are all from USA.... where will they go in regional division??

[lespeutere]

I don't think, anybody disputed that strength of play decides at what level of division people are playing. It's just that if there are 16 players for divisions B, one would try to have as little time difference as possible (based on f.ds championships data, that would probably be B1: America, B2: rest, i.e. mainly Europe and Japan).

[EgorK]

My 2 cents:

1. 5 player divisions with 4 week schedule and 1 week intermission between seasons, this way no need for promotion relegation matches and there is still not much of "swamp" in the middle with #1 promoted, #4 and #5 relegated and #3 and #4 stays where they are. Also this way if you bail out from one season - it would be only about a month.

2. Vacant places should always be filled. First priority should be given to those returned from vacation, but in any way all vacant places should be treated as wild cards and distributed by organizers. Only lowest division can have less then 5 per zone

3. Partition by time zone seems most logical

[Emeric]

With 5 players in a division you need 5 weeks for schedule due to the bye every week.

Week	Game 1	Game 2	Bye
1	A-B	C-D	E
2	A-C	B-E	D
3	A-D	C-E	B
4	A-E	B-D	C
5	B-C	D-E	A

[soulnet]

With 5 players in a division you need 5 weeks for schedule due to the bye every week.

There is no bye nor fixed pairings. Each pair of players can schedule their game in any of the weeks of the season (having that flexibility is part of the core of the idea). Thus, the length of the seasons does not need to be exactly N-1 weeks, where N is the number of players of each division. That is just meant to have an average of 1 game a week, but having a bit more or a bit less than that should also be fine.

[Kirian]

My 2 cents:

1. 5 player divisions with 4 week schedule and 1 week intermission between seasons, this way no need for promotion relegation matches and there is still not much of "swamp" in the middle with #1 promoted, #4 and #5 relegated and #3 and #4 stays where they are. Also this way if you bail out from one season - it would be only about a month.

2. Vacant places should always be filled. First priority should be given to those returned from vacation, but in any way all vacant places should be treated as wild cards and distributed by organizers. Only lowest division can have less then 5 per zone

3. Partition by time zone seems most logical

Huh, I had not considered 5 player divisions.  That's quite an interesting idea actually.  No bonus matches, and seasons are faster.

[lespeutere]

Maybe I'm football (i.e. 'soccer') and Europe biased but 5 teams is barely a league, at most a group, e.g. something to start a world cup tournament or champions league with.

[Voltaire]

Maybe I'm football (i.e. 'soccer') and Europe biased but 5 teams is barely a league, at most a group, e.g. something to start a world cup tournament or champions league with.

The league would be comprised of many groups of 5 (or whatever number is ultimately picked)...unless I'm misunderstanding you.

[lespeutere]

Maybe I'm football (i.e. 'soccer') and Europe biased but 5 teams is barely a league, at most a group, e.g. something to start a world cup tournament or champions league with.

The league would be comprised of many groups of 5 (or whatever number is ultimately picked)...unless I'm misunderstanding you.

Maybe some terminology issue. For me, 'league' is the same as division. So we're aiming at a league system with e.g. Colony League, Province Leagues A and B, Duchy Leagues A, B, C, D, etc.

[Kirian]

Maybe I'm football (i.e. 'soccer') and Europe biased but 5 teams is barely a league, at most a group, e.g. something to start a world cup tournament or champions league with.

The league would be comprised of many groups of 5 (or whatever number is ultimately picked)...unless I'm misunderstanding you.

Maybe some terminology issue. For me, 'league' is the same as division. So we're aiming at a league system with e.g. Colony League, Province Leagues A and B, Duchy Leagues A, B, C, D, etc.

Yeah, that sounds like a translation issue, though as I think about it, I've seen "league" interpreted multiple different ways in various sports in the US.  At the high school level, the league is the group of nearby high schools against which you normally compete.  At the college level, it denotes nearby colleges--though "nearby" now means a day's drive rather than an hour's.

And then of course there are the different levels, which are sometimes leagues (pro baseball, for example) and sometimes divisions (various school sizes at the college level).  It's... all a bit confusing.

[rrwoods]

This sounds pretty awesome.

I'd be in favor of either smaller divisions (5-6ish?) or longer seasons.  8 weeks to play seven sets could get a bit tight schedule-wise, depending on the occupations of the players and what time zones they happen to fall in.  Probably smaller divisions > longer seasons but I don't have a strong preference.

Either way, I'd definitely be interested in the first go-around of this.  I've been thinking about GokoDom but I'm intimidated and unfortunately there's no way I could commit to the schedule.

[Davio]

I created a signup thread for the League in which you will find a link to an entry form on Google Docs. Please fill it in if you're interested so we can see how many people we're talking about.

[Monsieur X]

knock knock! Is there still someone on this topic?

Well i have an other idea : why not leagues with 14 players, with 2 promotions and 4 demotions

Platinium  one league with 14 players
gold  2 leagues with 14 players
silver  4 regional leagues with 14 players

1/ It would allow 98 players to play  (is that an argument??? not sure but i put it)
2/ if you lose your first games you have more possibilities to come back and hope promotion than in a 8 players' league
3/ More stability in each league with 8/14 players remaining in the league
4/ no promotion or demotion matches between 2 players at the end of league

[A Drowned Kernel]

I think the idea has been tabled until the end of Gokodom.

The problem with a larger league is then you have to play and schedule more matches per season, with 14 players that's 13 matches that each player has to schedule, so you'll probably need more than 2 months. Maybe a longer season isn't so bad but you don't want to stretch it out interminably or people are going to lose interest. Also based on the turn-out for Gokodom I think that the setup needs to accommodate more than 100 players (based on how many of the first-time posters in Gokodom see it through).

[-Stef-]

Don't worry, it's still going to happen It might take a little longer to start as gokodom gets delayed indeed.

division sizes
I really like the ideas with small divisons with 5 or 6 players. Shorter seasons also means it's easier for new good players to advance to higher levels.
However, lots of opinions on this subject so there will be a vote. Probably between small (5/6), medium (8 ) and big (12/14)

time between seasons
For organisational purposes, I really want 1-2 weeks between the seasons. Also as a player I think I'd prefer it this way.

relegation matches
I still like them but almost everyone else seems to be against it so I'll just drop this idea.

maximum number of players
I really see no reason to have a maximum. The format scales very well. We just add more layers as more people want to join, regardless of division sizes.

division names
I will create a vote for this after we have a sensible guess on the number of names we need. Suggestions still welcome.

time zones / regions
I would try to put people with similar timezones together because that makes it easier to schedule. However, there were also some misunderstandings about the execution. Timezones are just indications and not leading. i.e. if we're to divide 12 players in 2 B-divisions, both divisions would always end up with 6 players. I'd just sort the players on timezone and draw a line somewhere to split them. This split could be but is not necessarily related to some border in the real world.

number of games per match
In the discussion so far this has been fixed to 6 and that's ok with me. But maybe it's worth a discussion anyway. An alternative is this:
Everyone picks his personal favorite number of games to play: 6, 8 or 10. When two players play against eachother, they play the minimum number of games between their two preferences.  We would need to add some formula to make it fair, but I'm sure we would manage. (i.e. if you play 6 games each game is worth 20 points, 8 -> 15 points, 10 -> 12 points).
Maybe we should even allow 4 games per match in the lowest division? Or is this just not worth the trouble and "6 always" is best?

empty slots
Empty slots are only possible in the lowest division. If people leave on higher divisions, we'll just fill it with free promotions and/or new players.

[A Drowned Kernel]

For the record I liked the idea of relegation matches, it adds a bit of excitement to the tie-breaking match.

[yed]

For the record I liked the idea of relegation matches, it adds a bit of excitement to the tie-breaking match.

Me too!

[florrat]

I think we should also vote for the relegation matches. People who were against the idea commented on it, while people in favor stayed more quiet. I'm also slightly in favor of the relegation matches.