RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments
-
humphrey said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
I’m someone who’d like to play HL and 6s but I have limited time, maybe if 6s and HL ran during each others breaks it’d be easier to balance the formats, I understand that you probably can’t fit a whole 6s season in between 2 HL seasons but I believe you can probably come pretty close. For example, having winter and summer HL seasons and fall and spring 6s seasons.
TheS4rr said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
If this is to be implemented right the 6s schedule and the hl schedule should be alternated so that when hl is in an off-season 6s is on, or as close to this as it can get when working around seasons and holidays. That could create more opportunities for players to do both competitive formats. I assume most prefer to choose one or the other so they don’t play scrims 6-7 days a week.
This isn’t really possible without putting one format at the forefront at the expense of the other. While there would hypothetically be a gain from the players that wish to play both but don’t have time, there would also be a loss for whichever format needs to cover spring and fall, since for both formats those seasons historically perform worse–especially in the fall. Summer will likely overlap for the most part, 6s will likely overlap for the second half of the winter seasons.
I am just not confident there’s a good way to alternate the seasons.
-
consta
if you want anyone to take hl seriously, then you’re gonna have to seperate 6s and hl. theres too many people dropping highlander because of the overlap of seasons -
minty disagree - we just have to make HL a better option/competitor to 6s for player interest (such as through increased competitiveness by options like expanded prize pools)
-
Should be noted that for the majority of the teams in the league, their offseason starts whenever playoff begins/their run ends in playoffs.
Invite and Advanced ending their season the latest of any division in RGL HL is due to the fact that the teams play their loser bracket matches every Monday (on its own separate week) rather than playing two matches in a week. It makes the offseason shorter as a result.
-
Because visuals are important in these types of discussions. I went ahead and made a schedule based off the next calendar year to show what this would look like. This is based off Alto’s 9 week season, with 11 weeks between seasons. I also threw in a 4 week cup during both off seasons, which can easily be shortened to increase the non-play time off-season., which currently is 3 weeks before the cup, and 4 weeks after.
%(#0bf927)[Green] = Regular Season
%(#59a8f3)[Blue] = Playoffs
%(#db42f0)[Purple] = Cup -
@Mothership How did you make this? I wanted to sketch some things like that, right now the ideas i’ve had are on a really ugly google sheet
edit: wait nvm being sick is making me dumb this would be rly easy to make
-
vorboyvo said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
@Mothership How did you make this? I wanted to sketch some things like that, right now the ideas i’ve had are on a really ugly google sheet
edit: wait nvm being sick is making me dumb this would be rly easy to make
I literally just googled “2023 calendar”. Downloaded the .png, and added in squares with crayon fill via windows paint.
The hardest part was choosing the colors.
-
Using Mothership’s colour scheme
9-week seasons, no break before playoffs, Winter and Summer seasons and a mini-season/event (exp?) in Fall
10-week seasons for Inv/Adv, 9w with week break for other divs, Winter and Summer seasons
Of course these are just examples. I will say that having seasons that line consistently with IRL seasons (winter/spring, summer, fall) is probably healthier for the scene in terms of having people able to make it for games. Also a consideration is that I feel we have to start S13 in late January because S12 ends so late this year.
-
One thing to note, which I think might be important, is that if we follow the visual I made, that would result in 17 week off seasons for non-playoff teams.
That is almost 4 months.
If we do switch to the new model, I think we should rework how playoffs currently work to include the lower placed teams.
The easiest method I can think of is doing a split playoff bracket, where the top 8(ish) teams go to normal playoffs as normal, and everyone else plays their own type of playoffs for end of season placements. This would obviously need to be limited to four weeks, but would shave off a month from the downtime.
IMO it just needs to some form of competitive gameplay that affects final season placements, while also being fun.
just call it the Bonus round or something.
-
vorboyvo Why are you waiting until the end of January to start the winter season? Why not start it the 2nd/3rd week instead?
both of those suck IMO simply because of the almost 5 month break for non playoff teams.
-
@Mothership said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
vorboyvo Why are you waiting until the end of January to start the winter season? Why not start it the 2nd/3rd week instead?
both of those suck IMO simply because of the almost 5 month break for non playoff teams.
the last day for playoff matches is dec 19 (with bracket reset). the week after is christmas. starting jan 9 or 16 means players who reached deep into playoffs get 2/3 effective weeks, 1/2 if they’re out for new year’s weekend too, respectively.
-
@Mothership said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
One thing to note, which I think might be important, is that if we follow the visual I made, that would result in 17 week off seasons for non-playoff teams.
That is almost 4 months.I also don’t think long offseasons is a problem as long as there’s a tournament (cup, season, mini-season) to prep towards, for what it’s worth. It gives teams more time to scrim and practice and get their stuff in order.
-
vorboyvo said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
@Mothership said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
One thing to note, which I think might be important, is that if we follow the visual I made, that would result in 17 week off seasons for non-playoff teams.
That is almost 4 months.I also don’t think long offseasons is a problem as long as there’s a tournament (cup, season, mini-season) to prep towards, for what it’s worth. It gives teams more time to scrim and practice and get their stuff in order.
I do not think you should be expecting that everyone will be playing the cups. they should be taken into account as a fun option for people, but does not excuse the 17 week off season.
The main counter argument is that you are already doing playoffs, so it should not be a ton more work in theory to include something for the non-playoff teams during the start of the playoff part of the season.
-
@Mothership said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
I do not think you should be expecting that everyone will be playing the cups. they should be taken into account as a fun option for people
Wait, why?
We’re not just looking at doing funny/experimental events. We’re looking at doing regular HL cups on regular rotational maps. They’re tournaments all the same.
Obviously some people won’t be able to make the cups because of scheduling problems - but others who can’t play regular season matches will.
I’m not opposed to the idea of a second playoffs, though.
-
vorboyvo said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
@Mothership said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
I do not think you should be expecting that everyone will be playing the cups. they should be taken into account as a fun option for people
Wait, why?
We’re not just looking at doing funny/experimental events. We’re looking at doing regular HL cups on regular rotational maps. They’re tournaments all the same.
Obviously some people won’t be able to make the cups because of scheduling problems - but others who can’t play regular season matches will.
I’m not opposed to the idea of a second playoffs, though.
because the regular seasons are what matters. you should never sacrifice the regular season so you guys can run cups, regardless of what you have planned for them.
cups are not a replacement for the regular season and not everyone will care about them. I still recall people I played cups with not making matches because they had tryouts for the regular season.
From the perspective of the Highlander team themselves, you guys should also should be focused mainly on the regular season and not cups.
Cups should be viewed as a cherry on your ice cream Sunday. nice to have, provides some color to your dessert. But you should not be putting the same amount of effort into the cherries as you do the actual dessert itself.
The main point, even with the cups during the offseason, the offseason is still 17 weeks long for non playoff teams.
With that said…
To be 100% honest, the issue with the schedule seems to be a issue with HL, and not something that 6’s is complaining about at all.
Is there a reason why we cant just follow the same exact schedule as 6’s? They have a 9 week season three times a year including playoffs.
if the major issue is because we had to add bye weeks due to those Monday match dates corresponding with Valentines day and fourth of july, we could always just remove the default match times and just tell people to submit match scores before Thursday. 6’s can do it, there is zero reason why Highlander cant follow suit. We are already looking at trying to implement their prize pool system into HL.
This might be an unpopular take, but the issue this problem seems to be tackling is more of a cultural issue with the NA Highlander format itself than anything else.
Now that isn’t to say I do not like this change. If done correctly for the correct reasons, it can be a huge spur of growth. However if the potential issues are not addressed and dealt with beforehand, it will turn into a huge actual issue that you will need to scramble to fix. I can already see the incoming forum threads.
-
i like the amount of tf2 that is played currently, however i really think that the problem with short offseasons would be solved if we shortened how long playoffs are. if 6s does it all in one weekend, why can’t hl do it too? everyone is already playing 4 hours of highlander on the weekend and playoff teams do more than that reviewing demos and what not. or at the very least, make it so lower bracket matches are played on a different day, like saturday or sunday, so there isn’t one week where the upper bracket team is just waiting for the lower bracket game to end.
another thing is, should a holiday coincide with a monday again, just make people play the game on saturday or sunday. we’ve shown this season that multiple teams are open to the idea (4 teams played their matches on sunday 10/30 this season 'cause of halloween)
-
american said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
make it so lower bracket matches are played on a different day, like saturday or sunday, so there isn’t one week where the upper bracket team is just waiting for the lower bracket game to end.
This kills 2 birds with 1 stone. Not only does it lengthen the off season for playoff teams, but it means non-playoff teams aren’t waiting so long for playoffs to finish.
As it stands, non-playoff teams have essentially an off season that is double the length.
another thing is, should a holiday coincide with a monday again, just make people play the game on saturday or sunday. we’ve shown this season that multiple teams are open to the idea (4 teams played their matches on sunday 10/30 this season 'cause of halloween)
This would be a good solution, but part of it is a change in culture that needs to happen in HL. In 6’s it’s very common place to reschedule matches, but in HL most teams will just take a FFW instead of rescheduling. Might require a rules level change format wise.
-
tl;dr I like Alto’s schedule more than Vibe’s and agree with Mothership’s points on it as well.
It seems that the effect of actually picking up players during the off season has been lost in the discussion as well. I personally like how Alto’s revision of the schedule as it would give teams 2 and a half months (or even 4 and a half months of they’re knocked earlier in the playoffs from the previous season) to find players and start creating strategies for the upcoming season. The schedules that Vibe presented seem to be heavily favoring teams that would be made during the winter and fall and would continue to play together till the spring season. While this may introduce more committed and longer-lasting teams, it could also introduce a loss of skill as those players and teams that were playing in playoffs would not be able to sufficiently tryout for their or other teams. This would then lead to some teams being heavily stacked as they have stuck together longer or have simply just had more time after the spring regular season to try new ideas and strategies. I hope I didn’t misconstrue anything of what either of you said.
-
american said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
i like the amount of tf2 that is played currently, however i really think that the problem with short offseasons would be solved if we shortened how long playoffs are. if 6s does it all in one weekend, why can’t hl do it too?
We could even do it in two weekends, if all in one weekend feels like a bit too much, and still significantly increase the length of offseasons. I kind of like the idea of having it all in one weekend though, it would make playoffs feel like a special event. I bet people who watch playoffs live would like it too.
-
meo said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
We could even do it in two weekends, if all in one weekend feels like a bit too much, and still significantly increase the length of offseasons. I kind of like the idea of having it all in one weekend though, it would make playoffs feel like a special event. I bet people who watch playoffs live would like it too.
I think 2 weekends is a better idea. There needs to be time for pick bans and for teams to practice 3 maps. With 4 team double elimination, 5 matches is too much for 1 weekend.