Problem:
Individual players can slow down the entire clan league (by vacations and/or playing slowly)

Example:
I counted 6 players/teams in divA that so far only completed 0 or 1 of their 6 match-ups.
Extrapolating -and estimating- means that completing the last 2% of CL games will probably take 50% of the CL duration.
Highly undesirable.

Solution:
1* somehow restrict the usage of holidays. Especially in 3v3 team games, players taking holidays can drag games forever. I wouldn't know how this can be implemented in a fair way. Or how to implement it practically. (edit: removed: "so I'd be against it", maybe there is a solution somehow)
2* every x days a game will be created without taking into account how much games the players already have (as posted by krunx above)
3* a player will have 2 games maximum untill a certain date or until a certain level of completion. Thereafter, additional games are created every 1st day of the month, every 10 days, or something like that
4* the intital maximum number of ongoing games remains 2. This will increase to 3/4/5/6 after a certain amount of time.
5* more radical and maybe easier to implement: after a certain date, all remaining games are created at the same time (i.e. max ongoing games to 6)

I think solution 4 is the most elegant. Solution 5 will be fine in my opinion. Disadvantageous for very slow players and teams, but I think that they should be stimulated to make moves within a reasonable time for the sake of the next CL starting at a reasonable time after most players completed their CL games.

Edited 6/1/2017 09:13:35

Vacations:

I think vacations are indeed the biggest problem. I have an opponent who is on a 42 days + vacation, might even hit the 50-day mark. I also had another opponent going on a 30 days vacation. These things are extending the season.

A solution that might work would be part time substitutions. That means that player who need a vacation for more than 2 weeks need to get subbed out for that time span with another player. These substitutions doesn't count against the total Substitution count.

If there will be a fixed schedule that would mean that games can be started in time without the player on the long vacation but instead with an active player. That also decrease the chance of other people f.ex. teammates get overloaded with games.


Fixed schedule:

Another idea to the fixed Schedule would be the time frame to create new games.

We're playing a RoR game against Lynx going on for almost 2 months. Reduced with vacations it might be a real play time of 1 1/2 month. So i think everything below that time span would be to short. 50 days might be a good indicator, which is slightly more than 1 1/2 month.


Alts and Multi accounts:

I do like the idea of Aura Guardian. Taking the highest account as the reference seems to be an effective way to try to solve that problem. An exception of that rule only with good reasons.
U could also track the players in a list which will add new players for each season starting with this season to determine the CL Account of that player.


substitutions:
An official thread would add the possibility to help u out there, through i don't know if it's possible to link player accounts into the lineup when u leave google spreadsheets and use another system.


Voluntary work:

Scorekeeping isn't an option for me, since i know that i probably don't have the durability to enjoy doing that job.

But if u need help with creating and tracking a list of CL accounts or adding substitutions into a spreadsheet i could help u out there.

What do all those scorekeepers do? Isn't it automated already(that's what i thinking looking at those spreadsheets)

Games being decided by non-joins
If possible with CLOT (might require quite some programming?): do not delete such games after 3 days, but instead allow a replacement. I.e.: non-joins can be "removed by host" and replaced by the replacement. Delete after 7 days (or so) if still not joined.

More player level breakdown of stats needed
Is this really needed? It's clan league, not individual players of clans league.

Substitutions require manual work to be done by the league organizers
No idea how to solve this.

Notification issues: notification requires manual work by organizers and sometimes fails to reach the necessary audience
Require e-mails for the responsibles of each clans and let the CLOT send out (automated) emails?

Alts and multi-clan membership is a growing problem.
I don't see the problem per se, but I think transparency is most important. Every alt above a certain (low) level (say 30) of every player who joins must be declared and is published in advance. A rule that you can't switch constantly might be nice, but too restrictive isn't good either, it would hurt too many people who actually mean well.

Using Google Docs instead of a more robust database limits functionality and complicates improvements
MDL ladder seems to work well? Would it be possible to use the same type of database? Every player would need to "join" clan league similarly to having to join MDL? This sets up an immediately link between the "Clan League" database and the WL profile similar to a ladder CLOT. If you can't motivate your members to do this, they may not be all that suited to play in CL anyway. Also, by doing this, you know you will only have players who know how to push on a button, which they will have to do later as well when they have to press "join".

Lack of a clear schedule
Clan league takes too long, and specifically is much slower in some divisions than others
Starting games with a fixed schedule, similar to sports leagues all over the world seems like a great option here. You can really easily make a fixed schedule in advance as well. This does work better with an even than with an odd number of clans per division however.

For the lower divisions: get rid of qualifiers and simply make a large pool of clans who play 6 other clans on each template. I thought about it some more and this is really easy to do if you consider the following series:
2 games each: A-B B-C C-D D-E ...
2 games each: A-C C-E E-G ...
2 games each: A-D D-G G-J ...
...
If you think of the letters as being circular, i.e. A follows directly after the last letter, you can always either cycle through if the gap is not a divisor of the number of clans, or have a shifted copy if it is. Take 3 such series for each template and have each series used an equal amount of times (i.e. maximum of 1 difference in number times used) and you have a nicely balanced schedule.

Clan league is stalled by players taking vacations in excess of 40 days
Force replacement after 10 days? (i.e. automessage clan leader?)

you can't replace a player in an ongoing game though

^you can though. Just give your login details to someone else in your clan...

Edit:

Clan league takes too long, and specifically is much slower in some divisions than others

Don't honour vacations; use bank boot times instead.

Edited 6/1/2017 14:01:01

Games being decided by non-joins
If possible with CLOT (might require quite some programming?): do not delete such games after 3 days, but instead allow a replacement. I.e.: non-joins can be "removed by host" and replaced by the replacement. Delete after 7 days (or so) if still not joined.

i don't think it's possible - you can only create or delete game, there's no way to change players programatically. Moreover, i'm pretty sure that if game is created by CLOT you can't even do that manually.

@ Krzy

I think the scorekeepers are the guys who make regular updates in the division threads. Posting results, talking about them and the standings in these threads.

^you can though. Just give your login details to someone else in your clan...

That's some really good advice !

Games being decided by non-joins

• I dont think this is a problem. A player not joining is nothing different than a player not taking his or her turn. They fail to do what they have to do within the 3 days range they have been given. The only thing that is a problem imo is that the player that failed to join is invited to the next game right away. Maybe that should be changed so that a clan doesnt lose 3 or 4 games because someone went inactive. So freezing the slot might be a good idea.
  
  
• An option for teamgames is to have a substitute player who will automatically fill in if one of the players fails to join within 3 days. This does make it harder in regards of maximum slots a player can have, but it might be a relatively easy solution to this problem. All teams will always be filled with players, just that it is their 3rd / 4th choice instead of their 1st or 2nd.
  

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Clan league is stalled by players taking vacations in excess of 40 days

• Players who take longer than 20 / 30 (whereever you want to put the limit) days to take one turn will automatically lose the games they are in and the next games will be created.
  
  
• Maybe do the same if they take 10+ days on the last 2 turns out of 3 (so you prevent them quickly making moves inbetween two vacations)
  

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Problem: Alts and multi-clan membership is a growing problem.

Solution

• Unless they can get explicitly excempted by the Panel, the account that the player used for the previous season of clan league must also be used for the current season of clan league. (This would force players to change the clan their account is in if they want to play for a different clan.)
  
• Unless the player is only in one clan, the account that the player can use to play in clan league must be their highest leveled account, unless they are explicitly exempted by the council, or are already using a lower-leveled account in clan league from a season from before which this rule was implemented. (since mains usually have a higher level than their alt counterparts, this could help.)

I think this is a pretty decent solution.

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Every x days a game will be created without taking into account how much games the players already have.

My main problem with this is that it also punishes the team that isnt stalling. If my opponents go on a 40 day vacation, why should I then be given an extra 3v3 game? It puts more pressure on players who have done nothing wrong as well. I understand it is an option to look at, but I would prefer it if we can find a way without "harming the innocent"

Edited 6/1/2017 13:19:39

@linberson

alts and multi-clan membership
Why do believe this to be a problem and are there examples?

People are free to have alts and be in multiple clans. However, with respect to the CL, this is like the Miyagi situation all over again. If someone has membership in 5 clans and can represent any of those clans on a whim, it is a problem with regards to clan stability and that clan's level of performance. Promotion and relegation doesn't mean much if the same set of players come back to play in a Group they just relegated from. It is also unfair to everyone who is making an honest attempt to improve and rise through the divisions.

There is also the additional concern that a bunch of alts play for a clan for one season and take them higher than their level, which leads to that clan crashing hard next season. We've already seen what bad seasons can do to clans ;)

I won't give examples as we're not looking to point fingers. We want to improve stability long-term and have a competitive league where clans can compete well in their respective divisions.

I also have a question which I meant to ask for a long time: As CL is run right now, are there any monetary costs?
If so, how much and how can I chip in?

It costs about 20$ a month to host CL. I'm fine for now, but appreciate the offer :)

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@Krzychu

What do all those scorekeepers do? Isn't it automated already(that's what i thinking looking at those spreadsheets)

Checking for games, updating their results and all the spreadsheets are automated. However, the spreadsheet needs to be presented on the forum in a digestible format. That is the work scorekeepers do today. We're exploring ways to automate the redundant aspect of that as well(next season). Ideally, you want "scorekeepers" to just provide commentary and not bother with anything else. But if we can't get there, we need volunteers.

Edited 6/1/2017 16:46:09

^you can though. Just give your login details to someone else in your clan...

Doesn't work like that, unless you only have CL-games running on your account. on my behalf, i wouldn't want someone else to play MY games during my vacations.

On the topic of Alts and Multi-Clanning.

"Unless the player is only in one clan, the account that the player can use to play in clan league must be their highest leveled account"

This would basically be purpose built to destroy our clan's chances in CL. Alot of our players now (Dr.Love, Rikku, Xenophon, Bugs) all have mains that have since moved to other clans. These players still want to compete in our team because they see it as one of if not their main clan.

They are still involved heavily in our community through Alts that they have left here and the main reason their mains have left TJC is because alot of clans in Division A/B wont accept alts into their own clans. This proposed solution forces anyone from a lower tier clan to choose between 'not competing for their original clan' or 'turning down an offer to join a top clan'.

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Another problem is that this would stop anyone who is not good enough to make the roster for their main clan from joining the competition with another of the clans that they're members of. Unfairly penalising such players and stopping them being able to take part in CL.

Finally it would open up the option for clans from higher divisions to destroy the competition rising from lower divisions by recruiting the best mains from those clans simply because they can, even if they don't intend to use them in CL themselves.

@dry-clean

Then if they want to support their original clan then they should turn down the offer and keep their main in tjc. Trouble is few people have a sense of loyalty to their first clan, as soon as an elite clan offers them a place they jump ship.

@dry-clean-only: That is exactly the point. In clan league, you should represent your main clan. Also, you should have your main account in your primary clan as well. If players want to compete in representation of your clan, they should be main accounts.

Another problem is that this would stop anyone who is not good enough to make the roster for their main clan from joining the competition with another of the clans that they're members of. Unfairly penalising such players and stopping them being able to take part in CL.

Also exactly the point. This purports to cause clans to resort to "Free Agency" tactics, and trying to lobby players from each other. For example, take Drizzy Drake from FCC and Drizzy Hendrix of 101st. Both 101st and FCC want to play this player for cl10. As a result, clan league becomes less about the player's commitment to the clan, and more about the clan trying to gain leverage in clan league. For me, clan league should help build communities, not dissolve them.

Finally it would open up the option for clans from higher divisions to destroy the competition rising from lower divisions by recruiting the best mains from those clans simply because they can, even if they don't intend to use them in CL themselves.

Trust me, I feel for you there. FCC is always a prime candidate to be preyed on by higher clans looking for new blood. We have lost our fair share of members that way. But frankly, its the way it goes, whether or not you like it or not. Players are always looking for a challenge. I am out to prove that this can be overcome, however, I myself know its a long uphill battle.

Edited 6/1/2017 18:33:14

Games being decided by non-joins
I think that with a scheduled game start, this should be avoided/the responsibility is entirely on the player. So I would not change anything here.

That being said, an option I would think works well is: For each day a clan/team fails to join, they lose 1 point to the other team. If all points are lost, then the game is deleted.

More player level breakdown of stats needed
As MathWolf already said, other things should take priority.

Substitutions require manual work to be done by the league organizers
It would definitely be nice if players could do it. One user friendly way is if the CloT could read forum post (think Knyte's stuff, where you enter commands into the thread) and any player in the clan could sub?

Notification issues: notification requires manual work by organizers and sometimes fails to reach the necessary audience
In another CL thread I briefly suggested utilizing a Announcement thread that had weekly updates (including 'No updates'). MotD said he would do this for next CL. If the thread is updated every saturday/sunday for example, it should at least be able to reach the audience/ clan representatives. This still requires some manual work, but at least I think it has been minimized?

Alts and multi-clan membership is a growing problem.
First, I haven't observed this issue during the current CL? Some of the above suggestions (Use highest ranked know player/main only etc. ) seems to shot a bird with a cannon ball. (i.e. The tool is way to big for the task.)

Here is a hypothetical: say a clan is pretty much disintegrated, and all good players leave and join new clans. Then all the players play for CL next time, under a different tag. Yep, thinking of Blitz. I mean, do we want to stop them from playing? "Hey, your clan got demoted from A, so now you can't play in A for another clan next league? Oh, and not in B either?" Note: *Hypotetical* What will happen to Blitz is not clear yet ofc.

I would rather do A: Open up/encourage training clans. What is the difference between two MH teams and Lynx + 101st, GG +GGr etc. Thus players don't have to look for another clan, just to be a part of CL. Speaking of which, there is no rules against a clan having two teams, so can a clan enter two teams?

There is also the additional concern that a bunch of alts play for a clan for one season and take them higher than their level, which leads to that clan crashing hard next season. We've already seen what bad seasons can do to clans ;)

I won't give examples as we're not looking to point fingers. We want to improve stability long-term and have a competitive league where clans can compete well in their respective divisions.

Unless you are talking about an older CL, I would appreciate examples. Given the length of CL, it is not really unreasonable to see a lot of players change. Maybe some are abusing the system, but let's deal with that individually? As dry-clean-only pointed out, any sort of strict anti-alt rule could hurt perfectly fine clans.

Finally it would open up the option for clans from higher divisions to destroy the competition rising from lower divisions by recruiting the best mains from those clans simply because they can, even if they don't intend to use them in CL themselves.

+1
There is a very fine pathways to walk when recruiting. Unless a player asks another clan to join them, they should be 'protected' so to speak, from approaches from other clans. Just no way to prevent that ofc.

Using Google Docs instead of a more robust database limits functionality and complicates improvements
Lack of a clear schedule
I can't speak of the backend, but from a User-perspective it works well.

Clan league takes too long, and specifically is much slower in some divisions than others
The consensus seems to be reached already. Some sort of fixed format, where the created day of games is know. This CL games got made during exams (the starting point of the 1v1's was horrible imo.) Before the CL, when making the initial lineups, the start day excepted was January. I don't really like the 'staggered' start for 1v1,2v2,3v3's either. I would rather have them start at the same time. Right now it feels like the system was set up to benefit smaller clans, where players had more tournaments each. (Whether that was intentional or not.) Sure, it may be more exciting that the last 1v1 and last 3v3 games for MH, both can secure MH a promotion atm, but CL is not an entertainment show.

Clan league is stalled by players taking vacations in excess of 40 days
I think this was in part happening due to the timing of CL. As I mentioned earlier, CL overlapped almost -if not- all spring exams. Ofc Players take the month during exams of by placing a Vacation on.

The issue here , is that if we are going for a game every X day format, then back-to-back hurts 3rd parties. For one, I would require any player on vacation to be subbed out, in case of new games. Maybe all clans needs to have two backup-players/slots filled at all times?
For game-in progress, it hard. The only option I see, is to completely change the boot time, and disable vacations.

Edited 6/1/2017 20:49:15

1 suggestions I saw mentioned a couple of times was that non-joined games should have the option to use a substitute.

I just have to say: Absolutely not. Not joining a game is the same as a boot. There's really zero excuses for booting in CL. Three days is a long time to spend 5-15 mins to take your turn (or 5 seconds to click join). If you can't commit to that, then don't commit to CL, cause your slow play is holding everyone else up.

The delay of CL A is the real issue. I liked the idea of scheduled starts. I think that should solve the issue for CLA. For the qualifiers, just break it down into groups of 3 instead of 6 and have 1 team promote per qualifier. We can spread out the good qualifier clans to prevent an early elimination.

RE: Non-joins/Boots -

I don't think anything need to change in terms of this being a loss. You didn't play your turn, so you lose. However, a freeze before making new games to allow a clan to substitute a player makes sense. Having a player boot 4 games instead of 2 because you only have a couple hours to deal with it is a tough situation.

BTW, having to join games adds up to an additional 3 days to every game. Is there any way to do it where the game just starts on the picking phase?

RE: CL is too long/Scheduled starts -

I liked the staggered starts for the 3v3s, 2v2s and 1v1s. Partially because it's nice having everything kind of hit a peak together, and partially for game management if a player is in multiple formats.

I think scheduled starts make sense as long as you arrange a reasonable time frame (this will obviously be most difficult for team games). For example, start with 2 games and then force-start a new one every 24 days if necessary (equivalent to 8 three-day turns). Or whatever everyone decides is an appropriate number. You can take vacations, but it penalizes you if you end up with lots of on-going games. It would also save on time that's wasted like one team surrenders but it takes a few days for everyone to surrender and accept, etc.

I don't think banked time is a good idea. Let's say each player has 5 days banked time, that's 15 days of free time per team to burn every game and probably results in slower play than if players took vacations.

Games being decided by non-joins

There have been so many non-join losses and instead of awarding a loss, a fraction of the points can be reduced and the game can be remade with subbed players. Some specific cases where people fail to understand how much time they have to join or misunderstand how vacation work and even when they're online-failing to join and lose all points is too harsh.

We can have an initial banked time(maybe 1 day or so) for joining or even for picking. This may lengthen the league by a fair amount of time, but will help to avoid non-joins.

Alts and multi-clan membership is a growing problem.

dry-clean-only have given it concisely and everyone knows that Div. A and B clans are not alt friendly(Lynx maybe the only exception though-as i find some alts there) and someone like me will feel, if I can contribute something to my first clan it is good. Am not blaming many clans recruiting good players, but constantly going after good players from other clans puts more strat players into these good clans and the other clans who lose the players becomes bad or alt clans.

Imo, alts/multi-clan membership isn't a growing problem. This will exist as long as lower tier clans lose good players to higher tier clans or higher tier clans.

Clan league takes too long, and specifically is much slower in some divisions than others

I guess it is specifically slower in divisions where there are more good players. It can't be avoided, as each small parts in picking/ playing is vital and needs attention. Scheduled games as suggested earlier will help starting comparatively more games, but the finishing may be still slower in some divisions.

Maybe the divisions can be reduced to smaller group of clans (4 maybe?) so that there are lesser games in each division and will be fast paced overall. Like D1/D2, if we have A1/A2, B1/B2,... CL will become fast and maybe 3 CL per year will be possible.



Clan league is stalled by players taking vacations in excess of 40 days

TBest got subbed out because he was about to take such a vacation and this has helped for Div.B to complete fast. This kind of subs/sportsmanship needs to be encouraged and maybe have a separate count for this subs.

With limited subs and real life problems, many feel that longer vacations are much helpful. Scheduled games can help in avoiding this-as all have rough idea of when they can play and be in lineup accordingly.

Non-joins and boots.

Let's not look at boots as a punishment only for the booted team. It affects the whole division. When someone boots against clan X and then wins against Y, it renders the competition unfair and less interesting.

Therefore, if there's a possibility to reduce the number of boots, it should be used. I think adding banked boot times of 1 day to games would be a good move. Or maybe even less, like 12 hours. Not 5 days, that's ridiculous. Autoboot stays at 3 so you have to play your turns in same pace as before and banked boot acts like a very limited life saver. And doesn't require coding in clot.

It wouldn't make the season any longer if the game starts are scheduled. If they are not, the effect would still be nothing compared to people taking 40 days of vacation.

Additionally freezing slots that booted would be great as well.

Alts

I don't have a strong opinion here, but the least that should be done is revealing all alts at the beginning of the season. What's great about CL is this atmosphere, making predictions on how each clan will fare. Not knowing who is who destroys it.