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 | Season 5+ Schedule Setup Posted by |
Who Should Read This
This post may only get interest from a handful of you (and I'm interested in your comments). At the same time, if you have comments/ideas, I am ALSO interested in the other 25 people's ideas too. 
Options
Below are two options for the session schedule for this season and ideally all the future ones. One reason we're at 32 teams is running with 24 teams was ugly. 16 was great. I think 32 it pretty great too. 24 is ugly (but we now don't need to worry about that).
Essentially the options below are ideas I've taken from some of the folks who have a lot of great ideas (which are always at the very least worth considering even if they aren't always used).
I offer these two without my opinions as I want to hear your feedback.
If you have another option please post (or email me if that's easier).
Deadline
I plan to start designing the final schedule on Thursday (March 17th). I'll start coding it on Sunday and then we'll use if for season 5 and I hope all of the seasons going forward.
Competitions
The approaches continue to use all the seven competitions you can win each season: Conference, Conference Tourney, WGM, TMVL Cup/Shield, National Championship/Holyoke. Well, you can only win 5 in reality. So that all stays the same in terms of the types of competitions.
The Maximum number of mtches was 39 last season. These push us to 40 or 41.
Sessions, CP, and RP
We will go from 11 sessions with matches to 12.
The base CP with 11 sessions was 60. We will reduce that to 55 CP per session. Each session you earn an extra CP (for the next session) for each set you win (as in recent seasons).
Last season, RP was 140 guaranteed plus 40 if you did the full Media Bonus. RP will stay the same. The thought is that while we add a session, we also have more recruits out there which probably means a little more RP spend with extra competition. That will be reevaluated after season 5.
Summary
If you have ideas, questions, feedback, etc., please jump on this one and ask. This is one of those key dependencies/blockers for me that I need feedback on to finalize and code so we can start the real season. As always I may or may not use your ideas, but every idea/comment allows me to consider the best solution and the diversity of ideas that Max and I have received has continued to improve a game that started in the summer of 2020 and still has a long way to go. There are more ideas (not this, but other enhancements) that Max and I talked about during his Christmas break that I hope to get to this summer as well.
Thank You!
Readers Comments
I have only minimal opinion as a Newbie, but I like Option 2, with more guranteed 3 match sessions. Could sessions 1 and 2 be C, W, T and C, W, W,? I don't know enough to consider how front loading conference matches would affect the competitions though.
In Option 1 could the T in session 1 be moved to session 5, thereby removing the gurnateed 4 game session and guranteeing a 3rd in session 5, or is it needed there for coding or other reasons?
I also thought about moving session 1 T to session 5 in Option 1. And swapping a session 1 W for a session 3 C in Option 2.
There are no coding reasons for the T being in session 1. We always started with 4 3 3 4 4 matches in the first 5 sessons but we had the same number of games (as option 1) but in 11 sessions rather than 12.
The reason for 12 sessions is getting in the extra NH game which has to happen after the qualifying games (W and NT in #1 or C and CT in #2 - it used to be C, CT and W)
Need to work on spelling of Guarantee. I shall repeat it 3 times guarantee, guarantee, guarantee to get it right next time.
Option 1 Opinion
I probably said I wasn't going to opine until folks could weigh in, but as with everything, I'll break that rule too. :-)
The suggestion from James makes sense to me for 3 reasons:
1) Yes, it is probably best to avoid 4-match sessions as much as we can.
2) There's a 5-week disconnect from the TMVL Cup opener to the next match where the winners continue in the TMVL Cup and the losers move to the TMVL Shield. That could leave a little bit of "wait, how did I get here in this cup/shield?".
3) This gives me a lot more runway (and I need it) in terms of having to schedule "the next competition's match". So with T in session 1 I need to have that code ready for session 1. With T starting in session 5, I have a couple of sessions to put together the first W knockout round (must be ready for session 3).
My point #3 shouldn't be the only factor if playability is better by keeping T in session 1, but its there...
Just had a brain wave - why not combine the two for option 3?
I like having the group stage of the cup right at the start and I like the idea of the cups being evenly distributed across the season.
I also like the idea of the non-conference games meaning something.
So something like this could work (T=TMVL; W=WMVL; C=conf; N=National tourney/Holyoke; n=noncon; o=conf tourney)
8 conference games for seeding for the tournament and then 6 non-con games all before the national tournament for seeding. It would mean the conference tournament would be the only way for a team outside the top 16 in the standings to make the final tournament unless you want to adjust the WGM cup again.
1 TWW
2 CCW
3 CCn
4 CCT
5 CCW
6 noT
7 nnoW
8 nnTo
9 CCNW
0 CCN
1 CWN
2 CTN
Similar to John's but 8 C games to seed conf tourney (o). And 6 non con games to help decide National/Holyoake.
1 CCW
2 CCW
3 CCW
4 CCW(round of 32)
5 CCn(W)
6 noT(W)
7 nn(o)(W)
8 nn(o)
9 CTN(W)
10 CT(N)
11 CT(W)(N)
12 CT(N)
Can still shuffle later games a little.
That should say 10 C games to seed conf tourney
I noticed that session 10 W final could be moved to 9 and used as qualifier for N/H
Based on John and then Steve's follow-ups and minor tweaks from me, here's the FINAL, FINAL draft of the schedule. There could be a couple of more tweaks, but this is what I'll start coding to on Friday.
1 CCW
2 CCW
3 CCW
4 CCW(round of 32)
5 CCn(W)
6 noT(W)
7 nn(o)(W)
8 nn(o)(W)
9 CTN(W)
10 CT(N)
11 CT(W)(N)
12 CT(N)
I'm a little late to the discussion, but I do like the arrangement where you can have three conference matches in a session, or two conf matches and a tourney. For each season I've played, at least, it was easy to almost ignore the Non-conf match and focus the best lineup on the two conf matches. I think decision-making will be different, and also might make the non-conf matches later in the season a little more competitive as well.
I've proposed to Al a slight change tosessions 6 and 7 so that these are now
6 nno(W)
7 nT(o)(w)
It's impossible to avoid teams playing two home games in sessions 7 or 8. Anyone who has played the other leagues with groups of 4 playing home/away might remember having to play 3 home and/or 3 away games on the trot. This is a similar situation but as we play games simultaneously where I have a team playing HHAAAH becoming H H AA AH it is now H HA A AH H