Rules for Season 5

Confogl League Season 5 Rules:

Admins: JibJabJessie, oELECTRICSUGARo, QudriplegicChik, dave14810, MKJ13

Every game must be played on the Confogl mutation. The league will start February 20th and end April 20th. This gives teams roughly 2 months to get their games in. Team leaders (or a substitute) need to report their LM results to JibJabJessie.

We are going to follow a ranking system similar to how MLG, Gamebattles, and Chess rankings are done. This is to determine how well teams play each other on a relative level. The 5 teams ranked the highest will make it to the finals, given that certain conditions are met. We will still post a "Who Played Who" list, "Win/Loss Record" list, and eventually "Team Ranking" list. If we feel this ranking system is not measuring what it is intended to measure, we have the right to change how we decide who makes it to the playoffs. This is new to us, but since it seems to work for other gaming competitions we'd like to try it out.
• We are not doing the 3:1 point system because of boosting. It's not competitive enough.
• We are not setting up a bracket system for the regular season because the community is simply too small and disbanding is a major issue which gives us a headache.
• We will not initially put up the ranks in the beginning: the nature of statistics is that we need a good amount of data. The data may scare some teams because it's new and so variable with little data. Not sure of the exact date to start posting ranks, but we need sufficient data first.
• We will post up the formula we use and give you guys a run-down of how it works. It may be difficult to understand at first, but our intent is not to swindle you! We're trying our best to compare relative team skill based on how tough your team is and your opponent is through number crunching.
• Please note the nature of the ranking system encourages you guys to play the better teams in order to gain in rank. If you consistently beat weaker teams, you will not gain as many points towards your rank. Likewise, if you're the number one ranked team and you lose to a low seed, you will probably drop in rank. It is recommended you ALWAYS try if you want to be in that top spot. Remain active and keep winning and you should keep that sweet spot.

Teams must play all the other teams at least twice in order to qualify in the finals. There will probably be inactive teams and disbanding throughout the season. We will focus on the top 5 teams though to make sure they have indeed played the other top teams at least twice. If two teams do not fill that quota and were ranked to make it, we will decide who the dodger was and disqualify that team and another team will take that spot. There is no reason not to be able to play at least 8 games against the top teams within a period of two months. In special cases, we may ask those teams to play each other in order to qualify if your case is influential, but this is highly unlikely.

On the other end, teams may not play another team more than 8 times. This is to prevent boosting even in our ranked system. Any games played more than that against that particular team will not count.

The playoffs will be done in Stepladder Competition format. The top 5 will make it to the playoffs. The 5th place team will play the 4th place team, and the winner of that game will have to play the 3rd place team, and so on. What this essentially means is that the 5th place team would have to win 4 matches to win the tournament whereas the 1st place team would only have to play one match to win. This may encourage players to try to get that number one seed so you only have to “prove” yourself once. The dates for the playoffs are to be determined based on team availability for a set date agreed upon both teams. We will inform you all when those dates will be.

The roster size is 6. You may join in at any time to play, just have to contact an admin to be approved.

To address the issue of teams disbanding or changing frequently, we have decided to allow a team to change a player slot up to 3 times. Teams are not allowed to disband and come back into the league as players. You have forfeited your right to start a new team or a player for the season. Roster changes are allowed without penalty until Wednesday, February 27, 2013. After that, your roster is "locked-in" and so you can only change a player slot up to 3 times. Teams which do not have a full roster of 6 after this date may fill those player slot(s) once to their list without penalty.

To address the issue of violations to the rules, we first ask you to talk with the other team about it. Usually, disputes are settled between the two parties by restarting the chapter or agreeing that a wrong-doing was done and accept the point deduction. If an issue cannot be resolved between two parties, then please contact an admin to settle the dispute. We will judge what we think is the right way to handle the situation. You do not need video evidence, per say, but it does help your case. Whatever the admins decide though is final. We will be as fair as possible and listen to both sides of the story.

To address the issue of your team being inactive, we will allow you to use 1 designated ringer at a time. We will have a post up about who those designated ringers are. Any one ringer may hop from team to team: that designated ringer is not monogamous to a specific team. These are people who do not want to be part of a specific team and just want to play because EVERYONE is in a league match. You must let the other team know you’re using a ringer and they must approve. The ringer does not have to come to us asking to play: they’ve been pre-approved. If one (player or not) wants to become a designated ringer, he must come to us first. If one wants to change from a designated ringer to a player, he must come to us first to be approved. One cannot be a designated ringer and player at the same time, though.


Maps Allowed:
1. Dead Center
2. Dark Carnival
3. Swamp Fever
4. Parish
5. Hard Rain
6. No Mercy
7. Dead Air
8. Blood Harvest
9. Death Toll
10. Cold Stream
11. The Passing
12. The Sacrifice
13. Crash Course

Other Notes About the Above Maps:
Dead Center
o On chapter 3, if a witch spawns after the event, the survivors do not have to kill her.
Hard Rain
o The finale is not to be played.
o On chapters 2 & 3, spit is not allowed in the elevator whatsoever. You may spit in front of the elevator, granted it does not reach inside the elevator itself. No accidents will be accepted though, so I recommend just using a boomer for the attack just to be safe.
Dark Carnival
o On chapter 2, the survivors are not allowed to jump on top of the shelves where the CI cannot reach. In the event that a survivor does this and the tank goes AI, the tank will instantly die.
o On chapter 4, the Mustachio game is not allowed to be triggered by the infected.
o On chapter 4, if the tank spawns near the barn area, you are not allowed to push onto the roof to prevent deathracing points.
o On chapter 5, the survivors are not allowed to jump on the tent outside of the saferoom. If the tank hits you up there, you must jump down immediately.
Dead Air
o On the finale, survivors must corner camp in the area by the fence and open terminal.
Parish
o On the finale, survivors are not allowed to jump in the glitch spot on the posterior end of the first hole. The commonly known spot behind the ear of the bus is okay to use. You can still hangman a person standing there, whereas you cannot hangman one standing at the other spot.
o On the finale, you cannot run onto the next part of the bridge until the tank is dead.
Swamp Fever
o On the finale, survivors must stand in the corner to the left of the radio.
Blood Harvest
o On the finale, survivors must fight the horde in the house until the tank spawns.
Death Toll
o On the finale, survivors must fight the horde in the house until the tank spawns.
Cold Stream
o On chapter 1, there is no tank.
No Mercy
o On chapters 1 and 4, there are no tanks.


Other Miscellaneous Rules:
• No mollies are allowed. One pipebomb and one bilebomb are allowed.
• No gas cans, fireworks, or any other form of fire starter are allowed to be used.
• Since each team is required to play other teams at least twice, both teams have a chance of being the "Home" team and "Away" team. The "Home" team gets to decide whether to use starter-pills only (SPO) or all-health and the map. The "Away" team gets to decide whether to start as survivors or infected first. After those 2 games, you must alternate the turn for the "Home" team and "Away" team. And for those of you who want to cry about being "Home" first, flip a coin...
• All-talk must be called and fully voted on before leaving the saferoom. This acts like a “!ready” for us xbox kiddies.
• Survivors are not allowed to close the saferoom door if a tank is still in play. We have removed the "no running on tanks rule." We ask you to please be considerate and do not deathrace for points. Actually try to win by showing your skill, not Nikes. We WILL be dealing with deathracing cases and punish teams appropriately if we think you did. This is an ambiguous rule, but USUALLY you guys know what's pushing and what's deathracing.
• Survivors are not allowed to start crescendo events while a tank is in play. That will be considered deathracing.
• Survivors are not allowed to fight the tank in either saferoom. You may get ammo if need be.
• If a lag-out occurs, the team must get that person back or replace that person within a period of 15 minutes. In the event the team has a constant lag out with the person, the team must find a different person to replace him. Lag outs overall must not exceed 30 minutes. If it does, please consider rescheduling the game, or the team with the constant lag-outs forfeits the game. A team is not allowed more than 1 designated ringer at a time, but it is okay to use a different ringer in one game if need be. No matter what, there must be at least 3 original team players.
• If a tank glitches during a round, you MUST restart the chapter. Tank fights are extremely important: it doesn't matter if your team already wiped the other team with your first tank. Tank spawns will be different for the next round and it's not fair. The whole chapter must be restarted. Example of a tank glitching when my team scrimmaged another team: http://www.twitch.tv/jibjabjessie/c/1937258
• Exploits are not permissible. This includes: charging as you become a tank, using shortcuts not intended for gameplay, going on objects that are inaccessible to CI, skipping a crescendo, glitching the witch by running back to the saferoom, jumping off a high ledge and holding the use button to pick up a downed survivor, spawning through the saferoom door, body-blocking any ladder as survivors or SI with the intent to prevent the party from going up or down the ladder, popping the jockey off your head glitch et cetera.
• Questionable exploits are to be addressed to the admins if need be. It is okay to draw crown a witch while you’re standing on a CI accessible object. It is okay to shoot and melee your pump shotgun. It is okay to spam right trigger to manipulate sack order. There is absolutely no way of us enforcing that rule, so just learn to use it. Lord knows we won’t use the Scout’s Honor system.
• All witches must be addressed without the use of fire.
• Be sportsmanlike with killing infected. Do not deliberately kill an infected late to mess up their spawn timers. If you see it, please kill it when you can.
• As a tank, do not hit or throw rocks at a jockeyed survivor. Sometimes, this results in an insta-incapacitation and is an exploit.
• Each individual is responsible for his own actions. In the event that he commits an infraction, he will be dealt with. It’s not fair to ban a whole team for one’s actions.
• Do not spam votes if you’re mad or want to show off that BEAST hitman you made the other team pull. It’s annoying, so please just be respectful.
• Point deductions will ultimately be determined on a case by case basis. There is even a possible forfeit if important infractions are deliberately committed.
• If everyone is in the game with no lag outs, you are allowed only 5 minutes before you must leave the saferoom. Generally, it is extremely annoying for you to take a dump in the middle of the game and 7 other people are waiting on you to wipe your butt. Please be respectful and wait for the game to be over. Of course there are emergencies, so those cases will be wiped individually.
• Tea-bagging your own teammates is okay Just remember to be respectful to the other teams. Those receiving the trolling, don’t take it so personally. It’s just a game, not life. If you don’t want the troll to survive, stop feeding it. We will handle “trollish” issues on a case by case basis. No ban-hamma for every little thing though. It is possible for a team to be banned; however, that takes a lot of limits being tested. We want activity overall: a post will be made about handling trolls in the game :P


Added Rules During Regular Season:
• If you play a team from the league with all 4 members from both rosters playing then it is automatically a league match. There is no reason for it not to count when the regular season has already started.
• Split-screening is not permissible.

I've already discussed this with the previous league admins and got them to change this rule (and we all know how delusional and stupid those kids were), but I guess I have to address it again. Not allowing people to push forward strategically on a tank is the absolute worst rule I have ever heard. You are completely eliminating strategy and our choice of gameplay. Telling people they have to play the game one specific way is ridiculous (making us each run back on a tank spawn without a choice otherwise). MANY tank spawns are best fought moved forward to a better location (ie, pushing the tank forward to the bridge Dark Carnival 1, pushing into barn's room on DC 4, pushing an early tank out into the open room Dead Air 4, pushing an instant tank forward into the open area of Parish 2, etc etc I could find a specific spawn on each map). In some instances it only makes sense to push a little further past a tank spawn. Telling us we can't do that is restricting and unnecessary. Another point to make is that the second team to play is going to get fucked over in certain cases because the first team KNOWS for a fact they have to run back. Smart teams will ALWAYS just be ready and set up behind them, and that's unfair to the second team. At least how it is now, they don't know whether people will push or fall back. No more element of surprise. Also, making that split-second decision to move forward or back can dramatically separate one team from the other. Don't take that away from people.

The argument for this rule is that people shouldn't RUN on tanks. While I agree with this, there is a HUGE difference between pushing forward to a better spot, and full-out deathracing. I think you should remove the current rule and address this issue case-by-case as it is reported. As admins you guys can determine whether or not it was a run or a push (via stream, talking to both parties, whatever), and penalties should be addressed in that case. But don't try to just eliminate the option we have to make our own decisions.

tl;dr Eliminating an entire option for strategy in a stagnant game is not feasible and something that people who are used to playing a certain way will not grow accustomed to, trust me. It is not smart. This rule will be broken unintentionally and it is not fair to punish people for playing the way a certain spawn SHOULD realistically be played. I push tanks forward to better spawns, it's how this game is played.

This rule is just completely unrealistic. Penalties should indeed be made for deathracing on a tank. But you can't take away our strategy, guys, come on.

And to be honest, I don't know about all the new kiddos but I never really encountered a lot of running on tanks the last while that I played. Maybe it's just the people I played against but it was never really an issue...idk. I haven't played in a long time.

Pushing on the tank is gray area. Some teams will 'push' way too far and still argue that they aren't deathracing.

i.e. Tank spawns above Dark Carnival 4 barns. Most teams will push into the barns to fight it. However, I saw one team who were down -200pts and had decent health 'pushed' all the way to the crescendo button. They would probably have 'pushed' further if it weren't for the gate blocking them...(lawlz)

I agree that pushing tank to a better open area can be a good idea. I'm not arguing that, my point of this post is on another issue. The -200pt for running tanks.

I don't think -200pts is enough to stop running past tanks and continue running.

If one team is down and they calculate that running to saferoom will gain 600pts and account for the -200pts for running the tank, then some will attempt to take that +400pts for that chapter. While the first team died at tank and gained say 100-200pts.

Especially if it's an early tank. i.e Dark Carnival 1-2, Hard Rain 1-2, etc. You would be dumb to run on a late tank since it wouldn't be advantageous.

Maybe a deduction of half the current chapter's score for intentionally running past tank. I don't know the perfect number, but I think -200pts might be too low.

There weren't many deathracing on tanks this last season but there were some situations that came up.

I personally am okay with people pushing a tank. I know why it is done, and if that is the route people decide they need to take then so be it. There are ways to stop them and sometimes you end up getting fucked over. While it may fucking suck for some teams to push that hard for the points, it's just an aspect of the game we really can't effectively change in a fair way on xbox. Throwing out silly rules saying you're not allowed to do this, and you HAVE to do that, and you lose half(!)/200 points for this just complicates the game and allows for exploitation and disputing.

If people actually stop to try and kill the tank as a team, I do not consider it running regardless of how far they "push". Most maps have crescendos that you must stop for before progressing. As long as people aren't starting crescendos while a tank is up (THIS should be a rule), then I have no problem with them pushing to that point. The rules in the past have always been as long as you do not close the saferoom door, you're fine, and I am okay with that. I don't LIKE it, but I much prefer it to the "solutions" you guys are offering. Unless a team actually deathraces and doesn't even attempt to kill a tank, I don't think we can start throwing around deductions. It takes away our strategy (I'll repeat this point over and over trust me), it limits gameplay, and it sets up the second team for getting fucked over. People need to get over it, lest we move to pc and/or magically incorporate health bonus to xbox.

Until then let us fight the tank the way we wish to. No decent team is going to allow the opposite team to push 600 points without catching them at a crescendo/choke point/or some other area in the map. Almost all teams (sans new ones I haven't played yet) stop and fight the tank in the same ideal areas the previous team did. I don't think I've ever seen or effectively had a team push 600 or even CLOSE to it, nor has it been so much an issue I felt it needed to be addressed in this manner. Start acting on a fucking honour code so asshats aren't pushing 90% of the way through a map for extra points (ha!) in the first place. Every team I've talked to has had an issue with this rule. And Jessie I know you play on PC, this does not bring us closer to their type of fairness, this just restricts us. Ideally points should stop increasing once a tank is up but this is XBOX. Throwing around random deductions doesn't make up for the unbalance. I hope you guys realize that.

Also, you bring up points where people can push on an early tank Dark Carnival 1. I've seen teams (myself included) bleed out survivors that entire tank fight, pretty much ensuring they aren't getting fuck all for points.

I have absolutely no problem with the survivor team then pushing forward if things are not going well for them in a certain area. Some teams run into issues fighting tanks at certain places in the map. Especially early tanks. Who are you to say they are not allowed to play according to their comfort zone? Or to progress if one situation is not working out for them? Or even just preferring to fight it somewhere else? You're basically telling them they either kill the tank or die in the "designated" spot which is fucked up and limiting. If people want to push somewhere better to fight it, they have every right to.

Glitch wrote:I've already discussed this with the previous league admins and got them to change this rule (and we all know how delusional and stupid those kids were), but I guess I have to address it again. Not allowing people to push forward strategically on a tank is the absolute worst rule I have ever heard. You are completely eliminating strategy and our choice of gameplay. Telling people they have to play the game one specific way is ridiculous (making us each run back on a tank spawn without a choice otherwise). MANY tank spawns are best fought moved forward to a better location (ie, pushing the tank forward to the bridge Dark Carnival 1, pushing into barn's room on DC 4, pushing an early tank out into the open room Dead Air 4, pushing an instant tank forward into the open area of Parish 2, etc etc I could find a specific spawn on each map). In some instances it only makes sense to push a little further past a tank spawn. Telling us we can't do that is restricting and unnecessary. Another point to make is that the second team to play is going to get fucked over in certain cases because the first team KNOWS for a fact they have to run back. Smart teams will ALWAYS just be ready and set up behind them, and that's unfair to the second team. At least how it is now, they don't know whether people will push or fall back. No more element of surprise. Also, making that split-second decision to move forward or back can dramatically separate one team from the other. Don't take that away from people.

The argument for this rule is that people shouldn't RUN on tanks. While I agree with this, there is a HUGE difference between pushing forward to a better spot, and full-out deathracing. I think you should remove the current rule and address this issue case-by-case as it is reported. As admins you guys can determine whether or not it was a run or a push (via stream, talking to both parties, whatever), and penalties should be addressed in that case. But don't try to just eliminate the option we have to make our own decisions.

tl;dr Eliminating an entire option for strategy in a stagnant game is not feasible and something that people who are used to playing a certain way will not grow accustomed to, trust me. It is not smart. This rule will be broken unintentionally and it is not fair to punish people for playing the way a certain spawn SHOULD realistically be played. I push tanks forward to better spawns, it's how this game is played.

This rule is just completely unrealistic. Penalties should indeed be made for deathracing on a tank. But you can't take away our strategy, guys, come on.

And to be honest, I don't know about all the new kiddos but I never really encountered a lot of running on tanks the last while that I played. Maybe it's just the people I played against but it was never really an issue...idk. I haven't played in a long time.

This ^ plz. Let us choose where to fight it.

Agree with the objections to the going past the tank spawn rule as well for the reasons listed but also only the 2nd team will know exactly where the tank spawned, the first will only know roughly where it is and that could cause issues. I think it would be quite easy to designate areas which are acceptable to push to, which everyone are aware of. DC4 is a perfect example. If the tank spawns approaching the barn it would be fine to push into the barn, which everyone uses to fight tanks since it only has 2 spawn points, decent area to move around in etc. In this case there would be no logical reason to start going up on the roof since you are already in a prime tank fighting location and doing so would forfeit all points.

Also I dont agree with the halving of the points on HR4.
Reason 1: You are not letting the finale be played (I played the other night and standing beside the toilet spawned the tank everytime just fyi) so the 4th chapter is in essence the finale and should be worth full points.
Reason 2: I presume this was decided because its a short easy level with no overpowered choke points but that could be said about a lot of levels. Dark Carnie 4 is a pretty easy level to make (the only level a team finished in the grand final), Parish 1 is as short as hell. Another comparison, HR1, which is the same level bar an extra attack. However HR4 is more difficult since you are affected by water slow down, its dark and you have to push to most decent places to fight the tank instead of falling back to points in HR1. Basically you could earn more on part 1 than the designated finale.
Reason 3: It all comes down to the tank fight anyway.

I think by rule it should be all health no exceptions. There are some teams that have the ability to make every map, however this is mostly the case playing against the weaker teams. Most games I see or play in are over by the 2nd map and that isn't an exaggeration. Its getting quite boring to be honest. Awhile ago I watched a stream and the streamer's team made 1 out of 44 saferooms(I think they made Parish 1), opponents made 4 and thats only because they played EBK and they made all 4.
The only reason I even consider for not doing all health is no health bonus. However we could implement our own. There are a few ways to do this, here are a few suggestions starting with the easiest to use. You could double the survivor bonus, so simply instead of 100 for 4 survivors you get 200 pts. You could give say 25, maybe 50 pts, for every set of pills carried into the saferoom. And finally everyone with any permanent health would get an extra 25 pts. Obviously it might get difficult to track all these suggestions but doing 1 or 2 might add a different dimension.

Also please remove any rule that gives a designated point deduction. They were silly rules used on the other site and are too easy to abuse. For example the moustachio activation is beneficial for a team which got wiped there and they have more than about a 300 pt lead, hitting it wipes 99/100. You have only a 200 pt deduction for use of fire, well getting an early/ mid tank on fire is worth 200 pts deduction. Its easier just to ban things outright like the moustachio and dodging a witch. I also agree that starting crescendo's should be banned especially the exploitable DC4 one.

dave14810 wrote:Agree with the objections to the going past the tank spawn rule as well for the reasons listed but also only the 2nd team will know exactly where the tank spawned, the first will only know roughly where it is and that could cause issues. I think it would be quite easy to designate areas which are acceptable to push to, which everyone are aware of. DC4 is a perfect example. If the tank spawns approaching the barn it would be fine to push into the barn, which everyone uses to fight tanks since it only has 2 spawn points, decent area to move around in etc. In this case there would be no logical reason to start going up on the roof since you are already in a prime tank fighting location and doing so would forfeit all points.

Also I dont agree with the halving of the points on HR4.
Reason 1: You are not letting the finale be played (I played the other night and standing beside the toilet spawned the tank everytime just fyi) so the 4th chapter is in essence the finale and should be worth full points.
Reason 2: I presume this was decided because its a short easy level with no overpowered choke points but that could be said about a lot of levels. Dark Carnie 4 is a pretty easy level to make (the only level a team finished in the grand final), Parish 1 is as short as hell. Another comparison, HR1, which is the same level bar an extra attack. However HR4 is more difficult since you are affected by water slow down, its dark and you have to push to most decent places to fight the tank instead of falling back to points in HR1. Basically you could earn more on part 1 than the designated finale.
Reason 3: It all comes down to the tank fight anyway.

I think by rule it should be all health no exceptions. There are some teams that have the ability to make every map, however this is mostly the case playing against the weaker teams. Most games I see or play in are over by the 2nd map and that isn't an exaggeration. Its getting quite boring to be honest. Awhile ago I watched a stream and the streamer's team made 1 out of 44 saferooms(I think they made Parish 1), opponents made 4 and thats only because they played EBK and they made all 4.
The only reason I even consider for not doing all health is no health bonus. However we could implement our own. There are a few ways to do this, here are a few suggestions starting with the easiest to use. You could double the survivor bonus, so simply instead of 100 for 4 survivors you get 200 pts. You could give say 25, maybe 50 pts, for every set of pills carried into the saferoom. And finally everyone with any permanent health would get an extra 25 pts. Obviously it might get difficult to track all these suggestions but doing 1 or 2 might add a different dimension.

Also please remove any rule that gives a designated point deduction. They were silly rules used on the other site and are too easy to abuse. For example the moustachio activation is beneficial for a team which got wiped there and they have more than about a 300 pt lead, hitting it wipes 99/100. You have only a 200 pt deduction for use of fire, well getting an early/ mid tank on fire is worth 200 pts deduction. Its easier just to ban things outright like the moustachio and dodging a witch. I also agree that starting crescendo's should be banned especially the exploitable DC4 one.

I agree with you about not including deductions. Just ban certain actions. If a team commits a banned offense, they forfeit. No exceptions. Kill witches, don't use moustachio, etc. It's not hard at all to follow these rules. We've been doing it this whole time. I've never seen a team hit the moustachio thing in an actual 4v4, so why are we altering this rule?

However Dave I do not agree with adding points for any reason, especially not adding points for having pills, making saferooms, whatever else. First of all, I do not trust that any of us can decide WHICH amount of added points is the best for the game. Anything that we have to manually add or take away from our score I don't agree with. I don't want to play with a pen and paper adding points for this and that, forgetting certain additions, etc. I think things are fine the way they are. Let people decide SPO or All Health. That should be enough of a decider that we do not have to add points for every little thing.

I am okay with not being able to push past the barn room on DC4. That's a good idea. Going over the roof gives you a fuckton of points.

enderzeit wrote:
This ^ plz. Let us choose where to fight it.

Whoa bro don't out-hot me with your avatar pic. The fuck.

Hey guys! Thanks for the feedback, I greatly appreciate it.

We'll be doing a podcast and I will bring up your concerns from here over on to the stream.

So far, personally, I did hate the "no running on tanks rule" from their season because it takes away some strategy for sure. I tried to get their reasoning, so I just accepted as is. I didn't really go around and ask the community if they like this rule, so I just simply transferred it. I do wish people would be considerate and not deliberately run the tank, but I've seen it done plenty before. I WILL be omitting this rule now when I get the time to fix it (tomorrow). I will add the "no shutting the saferoom door rule."

I will remove the "halfing" of the points on Hard Rain pt 4 - I tried to mimic PC as best I could. Vorym, you're right: I shouldn't limit us so much on the xbox because PC kids do it this way.

I will leave the health as an option, but all health is by default. I agree we should use all health, but I'm not the only voice. There are several xbox players that want to remain with SPO, so I'll leave that up to the people.

I will add the rule of "no running past the barns on Dark Carnival Part 4 if a tank spawns near that point." Dark Carnival Part 4 is a heck of a lot of points, and is no fair for a team to gain points by running to the button.

The thing about added survivor bonus for each pill in the saferoom is too much for us to do. I know I'm lazy, and would much rather have a mod do it for me. I'm sure most of the community is the same way as I am. I thought it might be too much to implement Hard Rain Part 4 being halfed.

I will redo the point deductions as well. I do remember people being nitpicky in previous seasons, trying hard to get a win because the other team commited a dumb offense. i.e. Someone threw a molly off the map, didn't light the tank, and the team tried to get a win off of that deduction.

Overall, rules that were questionably broken will be dealt with by a case-by-case basis.

Thanks again

...
Holy shit someone who listens to logic.
WELL FUCK ME SIDEWAYS I think I'm in love.


Also another rule that I think would be agreed upon by the majority is no starting crescendos while a tank is up. No one starts a crescendo to move to a better spot. They do this to run the tank in all circumstances.
Thanks guys. I hope you get more community involvement in your league.

FROM WRATHCHILD

so i think most of the rules are pretty good

The no pushing the tank thing has to go though that promotes teams to play nothing but pussy tank. I also feel like most of those point deductions should just be a forfiet.
The gas can thing though is never gonna work people will bitch all day long about how they didnt mean to shoot it and to be fair i have popped gas cans on accident a bunch of times.

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And that is yet another rule I forgot to add, lol. Good idea :3
I hope more people get involved with this more competitive league. I don't want to share a spot in the playoffs with a team who plays TANKKKK mode or regular vs...

I definitely think a no deathrace rule needs to be kept in place in some form. It might be possible to make the rule you can't move forward if someone is incapped (unless you are chasing down a tank you know is "dead") or pushing forward into areas full of hittables. There is no denying that in both cases you are just trying to gain extra points.

What would you think about making it mandatory to take all health on finales, especially on Carnie. The game is basically over if the 1st team has at least a 400 pt lead when the 2nd team goes which is veeeerrrry boring.

So I mentioned this in the podcast, but after the podcast I was able to think about it a bit further and come up with some better details... wall of text inbound!

• Stepladder concept throughout the entire league, not just the championships
• weekly scheduled matches (1 a week) that actually go towards your record, following stepladder design
• every other match throughout the week (other than your weekly scheduled match) will just be considered a scrim/pug/practice/4v4/FO/circlejerk and not go towards your record (if you '4v4' the team you're supposed to play, you must have the actual match game scheduled before hand - designed to avoid teams being cheap and saying "oh this was LM btw" just because they won)
• no points associated with winning/losing games, the Win/Loss record is the only thing that'll count (max a team could get is 8-0 since there are only 8 weeks in the normal league play)

Ok, hear me out on why:

Stepladder design is meant to prevent teams from just playing the shitty teams constantly, just so they can get a boost in points. It's also to stop the bad teams from playing a billion times just so they can get points and somehow make it to the top of the leaderboards. This is ALSO meant to prevent people from dodging constantly, because they don't like someone on the other team. You have to play one (1) team that week, no excuses. If you don't like it, you take the loss.

Single weekly matches that go towards record: This is for MANY reasons. First should be the obvious of preventing teams from "boosting" their way up the standings. Most of us have been playing these leagues since GB season X and have played through every league since then.... and all of them have failed in some way or another. The common denominator between ALL of these leagues is that they all used the same setup (everyone choose matches on their own, whenever they want, against whoever they want, may the most active team win the whole thing). THIS.DOES.NOT.WORK. Sure, it shows that your league is 'active' because you can claim "My league has done 143 matches this season!".. but think about all the BS the teams had to go through - teams dodging left'n'right just because they felt like it, some teams not playing at all, most teams playing just the shitty teams so they can get more points, the shitty team somehow making it to the top of the leaderboard just because they played for the points, etc.. point is, it looks good on paper, but doesn't work from a competitive sense.
Most of us have experienced this conversation Person1:"LM?" Person2:"No, 4v4"... Not everyone wants to play LM's all the time, so my design will cater to both groups of people.. people can play their 4v4's all they want, but that ONE MATCH during the week will count towards the league standings.

No points structure - W/L only Let's face it.. whether people admit it or not, there will be teams that will exploit the shit out of it. Playing the most often does not make you the best in the league.. W/L records should be used to really separate out the better teams from the less skilled...

dave14810 wrote:I definitely think a no deathrace rule needs to be kept in place in some form. It might be possible to make the rule you can't move forward if someone is incapped (unless you are chasing down a tank you know is "dead") or pushing forward into areas full of hittables. There is no denying that in both cases you are just trying to gain extra points.

I see your point, but it seems complicated in rule format. If teams are truly having an issue like this, they may bring it up to us and show us video evidence of the other team doing it. Seeing LAMBS0N's post and hearing him earlier tonight on stream, I'm highly considering doing the weekly bracket the way he presented it. Other people seem to want a bracket up, unlike our prior leagues. If we do this, then deathracing will be a MAJOR concern since each LM is more important now towards your record. We will have to see the situations though, and determine whether the team was in fact deathracing. I want people to use common sense about what's deathracing or not. We'll take care of the gray area. I don't want to put up a bunch of rules and have people come to us trying to implement those rules incorrectly. I would rather have as few rules as possible.

dave14810 wrote:What would you think about making it mandatory to take all health on finales, especially on Carnie. The game is basically over if the 1st team has at least a 400 pt lead when the 2nd team goes which is veeeerrrry boring.

I thought we DID do this in Season 4 Confogl League, no? It's by default, so unless both teams agree to SPO, you may take those extra health items. Or do you mean either way you choose to play, you MUST take the extra health? In that case, I agree it's boring, but that's the way SPO people like playing. I will get some people's opinions and get back to you.

LAMBS0N wrote:So I mentioned this in the podcast, but after the podcast I was able to think about it a bit further and come up with some better details... wall of text inbound! ...

Sounds like an awesome idea. I went ahead and put my rules section under construction. Since a couple of you would rather have brackets to prevent dodging, and keep people from boosting points the other way, we might put this idea in play

ALSO, how would we do a stepladder for the regular season? We as a community already debate who the best teams are, and I really don't want to "eyeball" who's the best and worst. We should probably just randomize it, but distribute games evenly.

Jesus, you guys post such long things... it's like reading a novel. paahaha jk.

For me I think that us implementing the "all health" is going to rid us of some boring games. I feel like without it the game is just come down to "well we have our pills already, lets just see how far we can get". I miss searching... and taking little school trips around the map.

I've also always said that if one person is up and a whole team cannot catch me then something is wrong. Either I am super fast... or you are super unskilled.

However, we do need to re-word, or atleast be more specific about the running thing which I will talk to Jessie about in the morning. Also, I do slightly agree with some of the things I read. I hate dealing with pussy tanks. Even though people are FULLY CAPABLE of line of sighting a tank...

Jessie and I talked about this the other day, I think what our rule is (and im sure she will correct me if I am wrong) "do not run tanks but you are allowed to go up to as far as where he spawned". So lets say your tank on DC4 spawns on TOP of the barns and you guys are maybe still outside (the chances of that slim), you would be able to push as far (if you are ballsy) as whatever the placement on the roof was. Like I said, I am currently reading over all of this looking for loopholes or specification error.

Thank you all for posting, it is really been super helpful to us, and I am sure I speak for the three of us when I say that we are up for tweaking rules (seeing as how we dont start for another 5 days).

LAMBS0N wrote:

Stepladder design is meant to prevent teams from just playing the shitty teams constantly, just so they can get a boost in points. It's also to stop the bad teams from playing a billion times just so they can get points and somehow make it to the top of the leaderboards. This is ALSO meant to prevent people from dodging constantly, because they don't like someone on the other team. You have to play one (1) team that week, no excuses. If you don't like it, you take the loss.

Don't forget that the main goal of previous seasons were to increase community activity. Therefore it's encouraged to get as many games in as possible and any team that does so, will be eligible to win a prize.

What you're suggesting would be more competitive and weed out the weaker teams. That's fine and it would make for a better game to watch but that will discourage about half the teams in joining/playing/etc. I would say after like a 0-4 record, teams will get discouraged and quit playing for the remainder of the league.

So it's a trade-off between getting activity vs. fix dodging/competitiveness.

The first thing that popped into my head after reading your idea Lambson was, as Rain mentioned, what if some teams stop playing midway through the season? Its a good idea in theory but once even a team or two stop playing it would throw your schedule into disarray. Do you count the 4 games they did play? What do the teams do that were still to play them, they each won't have a scheduled match for at least one of the last few weeks.

Also in order for every team to play each other and to play one game a week then you could only have 9 teams signed up. Then once you hit 17 teams you are going to have to play 2 scheduled games a week to play everyone which might be difficult to do since we have seen how hard playoff games have been to play when team have been required to play a specific team.

As much as I disliked the scoring system from the other site, they got alot of games in, more than what was required for gamebattles for a month to keep the l4d2 ladder up. Unfortunately at this point the main goal should be to encourage activity probably at the expense of competitiveness. The 3-1 scoring system will obviously make it more difficult for a weaker team making the playoffs.

The only real solutions, as done before, is to limit the number of times you can play a team or make it a rule both teams have to play someone else before they can play each other again.
You could possibly give a bonus, say 10pts for eg, to a team who play every team once. It might cut down on dodging since it would be beneficial to play everyone.

I suggested this on the other site but was dismissed but we could do the RPI system to rank teams. The Ratio Percentage Index is used by the NCAA to rank teams. Its as follows:

RPI = (WP * 0.25) + (OWP * 0.50) + (OOWP * 0.25)
where WP is Winning Percentage, OWP is Opponents' Winning Percentage and OOWP is Opponents' Opponents' Winning Percentage.

As you can see it puts a large emphasis on the opponents record. It would encourage teams playing the stronger teams which might help with dodging. I wouldn't have a problem keeping the calculations up to date and we could try it for the 1st week and if it isnt working you could always just convert over to the 3-1 points system.

Great discussion! Me gusta :3

Rain is right, and I thought about that today, trying to find loopholes in LAMBS0N's suggestion. Not only that, how will we deal with teams that disband? It WILL happen. It screws up the records and who plays who for the rest of the season. Dave has pointed that out as well.
PLUS, it is a nightmare on our end trying to get people to play games. Like dave said, the past PLAYOFFS were hell to get people to play. I don't really want a whole regular season being that way potentially.

If we do a point system though, what do you guys think about 1:4 ratio? Some people think it's more competitive, but I think it might be too discouraging for weaker teams to even try.

What do you guys think about SI not being allowed to block ladders as an official rule? Especially on No Mercy with that long ladder, I think it's an exploitative tactic. Someone's pointed out you can get a few extra seconds of spawn time before survivors climb up short ladders, which is a benefit. I only put that rule up here because it was in the previous league, but did not get public opinion.

I want to implement a rule about requiring teams to play other teams at least twice. That number may change to a higher one if there's a low turnout. Perhaps cap teams playing other teams as well. If the RPI thing is decided on, then this rule might not be needed. The RPI thing will be discussed, and not ignored

Lastly, whatever we do for the regular season, WE WILL BE REPORTING WHO PLAYS WHO. That way it's out there in the open to see whether you're "boosting" your record or whatever. It might form as a sort of social punishment for those of you who want to play weaker teams 20 times.

Lambson you smoothtalking little beast.
I absolutely agree with his idea, which I also was suggesting before he posted it here. FOREVER.
Brackets would prevent dodging completely AND be a fresh change that we need for our tournaments (or reward teams that were dodged as it would count as a win). And we all know how I feel about that


However, unfortunately, while that may work for my team and the other "better" teams...it will not encourage activity, and will discourage weaker teams. aslkdfja;lskjdfas sigh.


I wish we could find a happy medium. I'm trying to think of a way to incorporate schedules matches + keep activity for the weaker teams so they don't get discouraged, and so their games count for something. Let me and my lovemuffin Ender brainstorm and get back to you. He will argue forever that brackets are the only answer but maybe we can come up with something that works for everyone.

I did suggest something yesterday in the stream that a few people liked. I'm not entirely sure how it would ACTUALLY work, or even if it is plausible, but it's up for suggestion.

We could still allow people to play games freely throughout the week, incorporating the 3:1 for wins vs losses for their games. Then at the end of the week, ALSO have scheduled matches that people must play.

You guys could schedule 1-2 matches per weekend for each team so teams are being rotated through. You could have the scheduled matches be for a larger amount than the regular weekly games (I'm thinking like...8 points for the winning team, and -5 points for the losing team? It has to be worth a lot, so people are discouraged from just skipping out on the games. But not too much that if you have a bad game you're fucked completely.) These are of course open to alteration. If you guys can come up with a better points system for the scheduled match I'm all ears.

You guys would have to decide who plays who. But it would go in a rotation so everyone is playing each team. This way the better teams must play the better teams, and the weak teams play other weak teams. Eventually I think you could come up with a way to make sure everyone plays EACH TEAM at least a couple times in the 'scheduled' match. I know this seems like a lot of work, but if you're going to go through the effort of doing it at all, why not do it differently than it has been done? Maybe this way people will actually play. I know a lot of teams that just stopped playing because when you're left to get games on your own....you don't get games.


This (I think?) sounds like a fair advantage. Play all the games you want and have them actually matter, but at the end of the week play your scheduled matches for a considerable amount of points.
Also I think that you should definitely record who is playing who, to prevent what happened last season (I won't name names....everyone except me* ) where people got free wins off the weak teams over and over and over.


Maybe you guys could do a consolation prize for the team with the most games played. Not throwing around your money though just a suggestion.


*this was mostly because everyone refused to play us T_T

So I was thinking about this as I drank all of Jessies coffee...

I am sure you all have read that we ARE trying to promote sign-ups for both leagues... and that your CONFOGL ONLY games, even in Silvers league, will count towards your score with us... given that the team is signed up with us as well.

But my concern is lying. I do trust most of you to be completely honest with me and the other admins... however, I feel like some people will try to take advantage of us by claiming they played something when they hadn't... or other loopholes with us being so lenient with the points.

You guys seem to be adamant about keeping some kind of weekly (or bi-weekly) scheduled matches.

Making those scheduled matches worth more points would probably be an incentive to play and gain those points. However, most teams would probably shrug it off and keep playing the normal way of "play whoever you want" during the rest of the week and dodge the scheduled match.

So to even more incentivise teams to play scheduled matches, if you win a scheduled match, say you receive 5 points and if you lose, you will still GAIN points say 3.

If you skip out or dodge the scheduled match, then you LOSE -4 points and the enemy team gains 2pts. So it would be advantageous to play the scheduled match even if you think you're going to lose.

I don't know what the actual numbers would be since I don't think we're even sure of the normal win:lose ratio yet. (4:1? 3:1?)