Hello everyone!
I hope you all enjoyed the long break! Best of luck to the players still alive in the championship; there will continue to be plenty of exciting championship matches to watch over the first half of the League season.
We are releasing this newsletter a bit earlier than usual in order to announce any changes to the rules prior to the signup deadline, in case these rules affect whether you would like to play. This will be the pattern going forward: Newsletters will now go out during the first week of the usual League breaks, along with announcements of any rules changes for the following season.
The other notable change is that we've held two very successful Town Halls, on the important topics of Cardlists and Seeding. These Town Halls have introduced a number of rules changes starting in the upcoming season. Going forward, we will aim to hold about one town hall per season, likely around the middle of the season. While they're obviously very worthwhile for gathering community feedback, they also tend to be very long and not something we can afford to do more frequently than that.
Summary of Rules ChangesSee the
Rules and Regulations Changelog and the minutes below for the full details.
- The cardlists defaults are: banned on, disliked on, liked off (same settings as tables in Automatch).
- Cardlists can only be changed between games if there is a break of 24 hrs or more between those games.
- Seeding to determine divisions now depends entirely on previous League performance for returning players.
- Games should be unrated by default.
- We encourage that spec chat be off.
- We clarified that dropped players demote regardless of when during the season they drop.
Moderator ChurnWe say goodbye for now to IrrationalE, our longest-tenured moderator, who is expecting his first child soon -- congratulations! We also welcome back volfied, who took the last three seasons off for health reasons and is also moderating the championship. Glad to have you back, volfied!
Moderator Rules Meeting Full Minutes- Cardlists Town Hall (August)
- Cardlists
- Motion to declare that Ban and Dislike Lists will be default enabled for League matches starting next season.
- Motion to add a question (replacing the current Banlist question) on the Returning form about the Like list, offering both complete possibilities and the pros and cons (like other Returning form questions).
- Motion to declare that Cardlists changes may only occur between sufficiently spread-apart sessions of play within a League match.
- Motion to postpone the decision about putting rerolling procedures in the rules to the next Moderators' Meeting (after which we will know the result of the Returning form question).
- Returning Form Questions
- Tiebreakers
- Motion to retain the Final Tiebreaker (2-3 game playoff) for all subsequent seasons.
- Motion to not add the third-order tiebreaker.
- Result: YES (unanimous)
- The Returning Form vote broke down as follows: 9% strongly in favor, 24% weakly in favor, 45% with no preference, 11% weakly against, 9% weakly against. Given this meager interest in the third tiebreaker, the moderators decided that it was not worth the additional hassle.
- Cardlists
- Motion to make the Cardlists defaults the following: Ban and Dislike lists are on, but the Like list is off.
- Motion to not bother specifying rerolling procedures in the rules.
- Should we define "playing sessions" explicitly (e.g. "breaks longer than an hour")?
- Result: YES (2 dissenting)
- Poll: What should the maximum time between two matches considered to be in the same session be?
- (0) 6 hours
- (0) 12 hours
- (8) 24 hours
- Flexible Divisions
- Motion to announce that Flexible Division Sizes will take effect starting with Season 37 (to give moderators time to work out the implementation details).
- Result: NO (3 dissenting)
- Majority opinion: Flexibly-sized divisions could produce divisions of unequal size within a tier, resulting in players in the smaller division having a better chance to promote (but also to demote). In addition, it does not eliminate the problem of not having enough space for returning players, but only makes it less likely. I feel that the benefits would not outweigh the added complexity as well as the aforementioned potential for unbalanced divisions - singletee
- Minority opinion: The players came out clearly in favor of this, with 54% in favor and only 19% opposed. It would not be very difficult logistically. - SamE
- Motion to revisit Flexible Division Sizes at the next moderator meeting after spending some time working out the implementation details (with the potential to implement it starting in Season 37 but more likely Season 38).
- Result: YES (1 dissenting)
- Seeding Town Hall
- Seeding
- With no strong preferences across the moderator team, we decided to go with all of the most popular options as voted upon at the Seeding Town Hall.
- Motion to switch to primarily using League results for seeding.
- Motion to first (lexicographically) order by previous season's tier: Demoting > Staying > New > Promoting.
- Result: YES (1 dissenting)
- Motion to, for Demoting/Staying/Promoting players (including those returning from a short break), next look at position in the previous season, followed by Win% as a tiebreaker. If still tied, look at seeding in the previous season.
- Motion to sort New Players within the tier by ladder rank.
- Motion to maintain this rules-based system rather than investigating a statistical model for the foreseeable future.
- Forum Posts
- when2meets
- Motion not to introduce season-long when2meets (too unwieldy).
- Result: YES (1 dissenting)
- Discord Discussion
- D Tier Divisions
- Motion to keep the time zone divisions as they currently are (D is split EU/AM, E+F are split EU/AMW/AME/AS, if possible).
- Feedback Channel
- Motion not to introduce a Discord channel dedicated to feedback.
- Result: YES (1 dissenting)
- Players seem to be happy with the current methods we introduced for giving feedback, most notably the town halls.
- Suggestions
- Suggestions from moderators
- Motion to extend Late Signups until the Monday of Week 2 (so they are open for two weeks).
- Motion to add two Q/As about spectator behavior to the FAQ.
- Motion to add sentence to Section IX of the rules to state that dropped players automatically demote (not a change, just a rules clarification).
- Motion to switch our schedule to posting the Newsletter and Rules Meeting Minutes during Week -1 (about a week and a half before the season starts).
- Motion to remove the "level" column from the standings sheets.
- Result: YES (1 dissenting)
- It isn't functional anymore.
- Suggestions from players
- Motion to add a reminder of the expansion rules to the opening Discord post.
- Motion to add a reminder of the Cardlist defaults to the opening Discord post.
- Motion to tell the Moderator Minions not to tag anyone who has played a match but not checked in.
- Motion to include "How long should I expect a Dominion League match to take?" in the FAQ.
- Add the "match points before game points" suggestion to a future town hall.
- Result: YES (1 dissenting)
- Motion to add "unrated" to the Rules in the Match Structures and Policies, under "The League standard", and update the corresponding FAQ entry.
- Motion to add extra promotions / demotions between E and F (e.g. 2 from each division) to a future town hall.
- Motion to open the a1-division channel a week early and allow them to play and report matches during that week.
- Poll: Should we consider dropping the forum account requirement?
- (2) Starting this season
- (6) Revisit another time
- (1) Not for the foreseeable future