[MKU-DX] Introducing MKU Apex

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Brandon

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Hello, everyone. With World Cup finishing before the end of this month, we're planning to run another season of MKU to round out the summer, starting in early August. For the majority of divisions, this season will be the same as any other, with 8 teams per division and 4 teams per conference. However, for teams who would normally be in Division 1 and Division 2, things are going to look a bit different.

Teams who would usually be in the top two divisions (what will simply be referred to as the Top 16 teams) will experiment with a new format during Season 15. This is the result of a few lengthy discussions that took place between staff and team representatives, and it effectively merges Division 1 and Division 2 together. This also means that the old Division 3 will be the new Division 2. To put it lightly, quite a few teams in this area have expressed general dissatisfaction with the current 8-team format. This is for a multitude of reasons, but one thing that's been made clear to us is that MKU is getting a bit stale at the top, and we wanted to try something new as a result. Introducing: MKU Apex.
MKU Apex is a bracket-like tournament for the Top 16 teams that will be replacing the conference format. In essence, this tournament will begin with each team being seeded into groups (tiered), which will then transition into two separate double-elimination brackets, with the top 8 teams entering the upper bracket, and the rest entering the lower bracket. You may ask, why run something that should take no longer than 4 weeks, thus finishing way before the season for regular divisions is over? Well, our idea is to run two of these tournaments per season, making it one week longer than the full regular season. Being able to fit two of these into any given season makes for a more pleasant experience, and above all, potential for more impactful games, which we feel was an important aspect missing in the current format.

Format

To map out how MKU Apex will work, the first week will be exclusively reserved for the group stage. As mentioned before, teams will be put into tiers and placed into groups (see image below for example). Teams will play at 2/3/4PM ET (20/21/22 CEST), and the way this stage is structured allows for a lot of parity in matches between the Top 16 teams. We believe this is important and superior to a 16-team double-elimination bracket for example, which was another idea that was also brought up during our discussions. This is because we feel it would take away from the uniqueness of MKU in comparison to other tournaments, which we'd like to maintain.

Screenshot_2.png

Moving on, the bracket stage will run for three weeks following the group stage. To reiterate, the top 2 teams in each group are placed in the upper bracket, the rest are placed in the lower bracket, and placements within a group go by Record -> H2H result with the tied team(s) -> Overall +/- in the group. Teams are seeded within their respective brackets based on their performance in the group stage, specifically their record followed by overall +/- (Seed 1 plays Seed 8, Seed 2 plays Seed 7, etc.). And again, each bracket will be double-elimination with matches being best-of-1. Lastly, the two teams that lose in Loser's Round 1 will play each other for 7th place, and those that lose in Loser's Round 2 will fight for 5th.


Screenshot_470.png
*Note: These images apply to both brackets (in other words, this same image but for the 9-16 teams).

It may be tough to work around conflicting schedules with this and the regular season, but we'd like to put emphasis on the fact that we're trying this as more of an experiment. Should this format prove to be unsuccessful or unenjoyable in the slightest, we'll likely return to the current conference format for the top 16 (or maybe even something else), but for now, we'd like to see how this goes.

We'd like to thank the top 16 teams and others we also reached out to for their time and patience during this process. While this is something completely new, we're hoping it will go well and we ask for your cooperation in trying to make it run successfully. As far as registrations for Season 15 go, we will be releasing the confirmation thread some time in the coming days, so make sure to stay tuned for that.
 
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Félix

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Hello,

Regarding the new format (only for top 16 teams), I feel there are good ideas, but that there aren't used to their full potential.
This is why I would like to suggest a new format for the next seasons, which I will do, after pointing facts that I see as inconvenients currently.

Current problems with the league format

Those who read the forum on a regular basis and are there since last year might remember when I posted facts on this thread that I judged problematic with the current league format we have. I have been told multiple times to wait and see. But now that 5 seasons with the current seasons has passed, we have sufficient data to analyze how problematic the current league format is.

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Why is the current league format problematic?

--> The current league format is not fair for all teams within a same division. This is because not all teams have the same schedule, since teams are separated into two conferences. While MKU Staff members do their best to split conferences the closest possible, it's often literally impossible for them to have full knowledge on all teams, especially in mid/low divisions. To support this fact, some divisions in the past seasons had uneven conferences, which penalized teams sometimes into making playoffs. There were many examples of a conference being significantly stronger than another conference within the same division. Look for example at Season 13, Division 7, where Conference B won 15/16 matches against Conference A in the inter-conference matches in the spoiler just below. You can see in this extreme situation here that Battle Brigade got robbed.

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--> The current league format requires staff to seed teams in conference, and it's in general inaccurate. If you believe the previous point was "just an extreme situation", the current one should make you believe otherwise. I collected final placements in division for Season 11, Season 12 and Season 13 in order to compare them with their initial seedings. Recall that all teams get a seed from 1 to 8 in each divisions. While the seedings were usually accurate in the first two divisions based on final placements, it was not the case in general for Divisions 3 and below. For example, in Season 13, more Seed 7 teams made playoffs than Seed 1 teams, while in Season 12, more Seed 5 teams made playoffs than Seed 1 teams. Also, Seed 7 and respectively Seed 5 performed better overall in season. Look that table below from Season 13 and 12:

mkuseason13.png


mkuseason12.png


Strength indicator: Sum of all final placement a Seed has gotten in all divisions. For example, if Seed 5 gets 3rd place in Division 8, then Seed 5 would get +3. The lower it is, the stronger the given Seed was during the season.
D3-D15 (2nd column): The same as "Strength Indicator", but with D1-D2 discarded.
Clinched Playoffs: How many teams from a given Seed clinched playoffs overall.
D3-D15 (4th column): The same as "Clinched Playoffs", but with D1-D2 discarded.

--> The community is growing up too much to support this format. The skill level between Divisions is getting lower and lower, at a point there might not be a noticeable difference between, say, D18 and D20. It leads to increase the seedings mistakes, not just within conference but in a full division. It's indeed common to see teams with 10-0-0 records with more than +100 average in low divisions. The opposite picture is also true: it's common to see 0-0-10 teams with more than -100 average too. These teams are most likely wrong seeded, and makes some conferences significantly harder or easier than others within a division.

--> It's hard, or even close to impossible, for teams to climb up divisions just by winning. It's actually way easier to recruit players today in order to progress into the divisions. This could be due to the fact there are so many teams now and, for example, playing 4 seasons in row, you will definitely climb faster into divisions by recruiting good players rather than winning MKU Titles every time.

Today's MKU Apex reveal obviously does not solve these problems as we keep the current format and therefore all its inconvenients listed above for Division 3 and below. While it temporarily solves the problem of boredom (tired to play against the same teams in the same format over and over) for the Top 16 teams, it brings another inconvenient:

--> MKU Apex format makes no sense for a newcomer in the community. Putting myself in the shoes of a newcomer, I feel it makes no sense to have a Tournament for the top16 teams while all the other teams go in a classical league. I would clearly think there's something wrong, or something I don't understand.

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A new format proposal

Seedings

Once all teams are signed up, teams will be seeded into Divisions, each containing 16 teams, by MKU Staff. All 16 teams in a division will be splitted in four Tiers (1,2,3,4) of four teams each.
Next, all teams will be placed randomly into a group of 4 teams (therefore, there will be 4 groups of 4 teams), but each group will contain one team of each Tier.

Week 1
All teams play against the 3 other teams into their group. Matches could happen in 8 races, as playing three competition matches in a row is draining.
For Top 16, it could be kept to 12 races.

The Top2 of each group will move into Premier Bracket (8 teams).
The Bottom2 of each group will move into Consolation Bracket (8 teams).

Week 2, 3 and 4
Each teams progress in their respective brackets, which are double elimination Brackets. See the picture below for more details (credits to @Blue Orange for the bracket).
Keep in mind the Premier and the Consolation Brackets are happening at the same and has the same matches, just different teams depending on their performance in Week 1 (top2 & bottom 2).

Screenshot_466.png

Mid-season
Once Week 4 is over, we reach mid-season, and we already get division changes based on performances done in the brackets.
--> Based on performances in the first four weeks, each divisions have a Standing from 1 to 16 for all the teams. Winner of Premier Bracket is 1st, while winner of Consolation Bracket is 9th.
--> Top4 of Premier Brackets climb one division for W5, W6, W7 and W8 in the same season. Top2 go into Tier 3 of the division above, while 3rd and 4th place go into Tier 4 of the division above.
--> Bottom4 of Consolation Brackets drop one division for W5, W6, W7 and W8 in the same season. Bottom2 (15th and 16th) go into Tier 2 of the division below, while 13th and 14th place goes into Tier 1 of the division below.
--> All the other teams stay in the same division, and get a new Tier based on their performance in their bracket.

Week 5
At this point, we have now new groups based on teams performance in the first four weeks. New groups of 4 teams in each divisions are now randomized as it happened before Week 1.

Week 6, 7 and 8
It the same functioning as Week 2, 3, and 4. Teams go into Premier brackets or Consolation brackets based on their performance in Week 5 and play their matches until Week 8.

After Week 8, the season is over. Teams can now transfer players, as usual, but only at this moment (and not between Week 4 and Week 5).
Obviously, these could influence the seedings as usual for the next season.

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Advantages of this format compared to the current one

This new format should solve, at least partially, all these problems listed above in red. Let me list how:

--> Top16 teams would keep the current MKU-Apex format, as they voted in majority, with close to no change (the only difference is there would be 4 new teams [top4 of Division2] in the second half of the season).

--> It fits more with the current size of the community, as it will include twice less divisions with twice more teams.

--> Therefore (read previous point), it will be way less likely (actually exponentially less likely for the math people here!) to have a season ruined by seedings mistakes done, which are always inevitable with the current amount of teams. Note there won't be conferences or different seasons for each team.

--> It will be possible for teams to climb about four time more quicker than now by just winning (there will be twice more seasons than currently, with twice less divisions), which is just more realistic once again due to the current size.

--> The league will be once again consistent for all divisions (there won't be completely different things for Top16 and the rest).

--> In a season, a team could face close to 15-20 different teams (which is amazing for mid-low divisions teams to discover the game).

--> Teams giving up will still have a bad impact, but way less than in the current format.
 
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Seb

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I would like it if we take Félix idea as a experiment and for season 15 a good idea. If it don't works, we could do an other format but its very boring to play every season against the same teams and it would be the first time ever in mku that you can climb Divisions in a season. Thats give a flexibilty Bracket and keep the motivation for everyone because you play against new teams week by week and if you play good you climb and if you are bad in 4 weeks you go into a lower divison.

The current Format with conferences is very unbalanced in my opinion because you can win the conference and loses Semis as a conference winner with a bad day (like in divison 4 season 14). That make it interesting but if the System if a Team play 10 matches very well and loses 1 Match close it destroys them a good season.

We play Playoffs in every tournament. I like Playoffs but i would prefer it to play like Felix Format or without Playoffs and only League. Its staff choice but i like it if we can do a new system and Felix tells us a good way in my opinion. Thanks for reading :3
 
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Brandon

8ran
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I would like it if we take Félix idea as a experiment and for season 15 a good idea. If it don't works, we could do an other format but its very boring to play every season against the same teams and it would be the first time ever in mku that you can climb Divisions in a season. Thats give a flexibilty Bracket and keep the motivation for everyone because you play against new teams week by week and if you play good you climb and if you are bad in 4 weeks you go into a lower divison.

The current Format with conferences is very unbalanced in my opinion because you can win the conference and loses Semis as a conference winner with a bad day (like in divison 4 season 14). That make it interesting but if the System if a Team play 10 matches very well and loses 1 Match close it destroys them a good season.

We play Playoffs in every tournament. I like Playoffs but i would prefer it to play like Felix Format or without Playoffs and only League. Its staff choice but i like it if we can do a new modern system and Felix tells us a good way in my opinion. Thanks for reading :3
While I personally like the suggestion Felix made, we're probably going to stick with our original plan for Season 15. This will also include a change we're making to Apex which will be explained on the confirmation thread.

To be clear, I'm not ruling out Felix's proposal as an option, as I can definitely see us experimenting with it (even as early as next season to be honest). Whether we actually choose to do it or not will depend on how this season goes and what the rest of the teams in the league think.
 
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