[AFL] After 6 years, let's try this again? Thoughts?

[Monkey]

Durka ran the second one. He knows what he's doing.

Ah, good

@Titan: I agree that it depends on how many teams we have. I'm assuming/hoping that the league will be successful and at some point we will have enough teams to implement playoffs.

One final suggestion. I think it would be a good idea to not have too restrictive signups for players because:

• 1) Clan rosters change during the season.

• 2) New people start playing fort but may not be signed up for a team.

[Titanoboa]

<First suggestion>

After I got some feedback in-game from a few people and also having had time to think about it some more, I will present a 2nd, alternative, suggestion. Note that I'd also be fine with the idea Durka presented in his first post of this thread. Just that a division system would be so awesome, haha.

• Small divisions of 4 teams.
• 2 meets per season (1 EU, 1 US). 3 matches per month. 2 month seasons. 4 or 6 seasons a year (depends on if we want a month off between seasons).
• Something like max 2 roster changes during a season. Plenty more allowed between seasons.
• Naturally: Winner of div 1 wins the title, bottom team is relegated, top team of div 2 is promoted, bottom team relegated etc etc.

The top division will truly be an "elite" division and even being there would be an accomplishment in itself. ALL the div 1 matches would be highly competitive.
Even div 2 matches would be highly competitive and it would be very difficult to get promoted.
Having long-term teams pays off: it takes a lot of time and effort to found a new team and climb to the top.
Once the dust has settled, due to the small divisions pretty much all league matches will be even and unpredictable. If we'll have enough teams to have div 3 & 4, I predict there would be even matchups there as well - thanks to the small divisions.

I assume new, league-exclusive, teams would be formed, because not all current ladle teams would have 6+ players available every single Sunday. This is good! Variation is good.

Question: Should the player market be regulated and should there be a currency, like in the ISL; or should it be free, like in the ladle? I personally think the latter is best even if the former seems cooler.

I know I'm not the only one who thinks having an established league with divisions one day would be complete awesomeness. And I know a whole bunch of you often have smart and constructive things to come up with; let's hear your feedback!

PS: if this idea goes through I'd be more than glad to help with administration.

[Concord]

any league will have attendance problems. If the rosters are too small, then there'll be games where a team has to forfeit. Too big, and people don't get to play (and fewer teams). Furthermore, if people don't know if they'll be able to play or not, because their team has subs, they don't bother showing up. (Elmo's ISL team had 12 players and couldn't consistently get 5 to show up). The Bowl and the Bowl Season already present a league structure. I don't see the point of adding another one. Maybe someone can explain to me the purpose of this league?

I also don't get the appeal of a division system, maybe some one can make an argument for why that is an attractive thing as well.

[Lucifer]

any league will have attendance problems. If the rosters are too small, then there'll be games where a team has to forfeit. Too big, and people don't get to play (and fewer teams). Furthermore, if people don't know if they'll be able to play or not, because their team has subs, they don't bother showing up. (Elmo's ISL team had 12 players and couldn't consistently get 5 to show up).

That's bad team management. Everyone who shows up should get to play, and you never have so many subs that you can't do it. If the league expects to run as 6v6 most of the time, you should have at most 6 subs. If that means rotating everybody out 3 at a time, then fine.

But there's no incentive for anybody to show up if your subs outnumber the whole team and you're just going to pick from who shows up and have them play and send everyone else home. If I found myself on a team that did that, I'd quit the team. If I showed up to play and was told there were too many people there so I wasn't needed, I'd take whoever else didn't get to play and start building my own team.

You can't structure a league around people managing their teams badly.

The Bowl and the Bowl Season already present a league structure. I don't see the point of adding another one. Maybe someone can explain to me the purpose of this league?

I didn't catch how the Bowl ended up working out. The AFL is designed as a round-robin tournament, hence the "season" period being used to setup the brackets for the tournament itself. It was always meant to have enough formality to be worth playing, but not to be so competitive that people are fighting over who gets to play on particular teams. If it's now redundant with the Bowl, then I'd advocate changing the AFL into the pool-style competition somebody suggested higher up, and have every team play each other at least 3 times during the season. The winner would either be based on ranking, or you'd just take the top two ranked teams and have them face off in a championship.

[ppotter]

I think the AFL is a different niche to the ladle/bowl. The bowl season is 9 months long, these will likely be far shorter (however much I'd like to see a full season with 20 teams a la the Premiership )

Having said that, I like Titan's idea, with x amount of divisions with 4 teams playing each other once in NA and once in EU, seasons will be short enough not to drag; if you're having a bad season it isn't too long til next, so you might as well stick around.

[woof]

I really like your second idea Tits.

[Venijn]

I really like your second idea Tits.

[Monkey]

I also think that Titan is onto something here with his second suggestion. I agree that, at the moment, our community isn't ready for long seasons and having short seasons would solve a lot of problems.

I am hoping, however, that teams won't be league-exclusive and will be based on clans and ladle teams

Personally speaking, I think I'd prefer the player market to be free and have no currency (like in Ladle).