The overall goal is simple: competitive, regular, frequent sumo matches in an organized format that coronates a winner.
The big problem is that people don't show up consistently. Here are the reasons why:
- Matches are too short to bother showing up
- Individual matches seem meaningless, compared to the direct meaning of a tournament. This is the short attention span problem.
- No investment in the outcome - part of a random team they don't care about
- No certainty that making an effort to show up means playing a match that matters: teammates may not show up, too many teammates may show up, opponent may not show up. All could result in the individual not playing.
- Opponents are too easy (or) too hard = not fun
There already is a kind of sumo-tournament circuit. There are 1v1 tournaments, SBT, TST, WST, these happen frequently, sort of like Tennis or Golf tournaments. A league does not need to replace or compete with them, (we don't need to replace or compete with wimbledon) it should compliment them.
We already have a sort of Global Sumo Tour. We already have our major events, we just need to fill in the gaps. We need competitive sumo play every weekend, as a compliment to the more meaningful major tournaments.
It would be a good thing, I think if the various sumo modes united under one schedule to form such the Tour. Classic 1x4 in February, TST in March, 1v1 in June, WST in September, SBT in December, or something. Then maybe one day every non-Major week there's a match window. From 12pm GMT to 12am EST, or something, matches played in some Tour server will count towards Rankings, in some scoring system. Not ELO, because it needs to work for multiple game modes. We could implement the /warmup code from pickup to make sure only real matches are being counted, where everyone is aware of the league play. GIDs from a Tour authority could be required, and could track player rankings. The major tournaments would then uses these rankings to seed their brackets.Tournament results would have a strong influence on rankings as well.
What you have then is not really a league, but it provides what I believe sumo is missing. The problems of leagues are mostly solved. You can participate as you wish, you can join and leave at any time. You never have to show up, but if you do, you will almost always be able to play. It's competitive, and we get outcomes. It requires a good server and a good website, and it would help if sumo tourney organizers joined in and organized their Majors into some sort of schedule. Thoughts?
