Hello everyone,
This thread is to inform everyone of the changes MKU Staff has decided to make for Season 8. To start things off, we'd like to thank @Nato, @Lez and @Babou for their time on MKU Staff. In their place we welcome @Brandon, @Mars, @Stevens (the founder of MKU in 2014), and @RobertoRK to MKU Staff! We received many applications and narrowed it down to these four after a vote.
Season 8 will start on September 8th; we should have a confirmation thread out next weekend. We will continue using the Conference format, as we received positive feedback overall from teams regarding their experience with the format last season.
You may notice that we have removed rules for the other formats from the ruleset; for now MKU Staff do not intend on running other formats, so we removed the League / Circuit / Tournament rules from the ruleset for now to keep things clear for everyone reading.
New Rules
These are the tiebreakers we used during Season 7; however, while making the conference format rules this slipped through the cracks, which caused some controversy last season between some teams. We've now clarified it in the ruleset.
This rule was added to help prevent teams benefiting off of another team's drop; for example, in previous seasons, if a team wins all of their matches, but forfeits twice in the first half of the season, and drops during the second half, only the second half would have been changed to all forfeits, giving the two teams that had a free win on them a significant advantage. Now, if a team drops from the league, any portions of the season where the team had a forfeit will be changed to all forfeits.
There was a lot of confusion regarding playoffs last season; we've made the playoffs its own section in the ruleset and added some rules to clarify things. We also changed the teams that make playoffs from top 3 in each conference to top 2 in each conference and 2 wild card teams; this is to help prevent potentially unbalanced conferences within a division from screwing over teams in the stronger conference from playoffs.
After observing last season, it seems no teams had any trouble with playing at 2PM and 3PM ET, so we are going to make these the official default times for matches from now on. Times will be much different for teams from Asia or Australia, and can potentially be many different times depending on the time of year and the teams you're playing against. As such, we encourage teams from these regions to check with their division admin or check the division table for their official times.
Since there are 2 matches a week, if a team was unable to play on a certain date last season they would be forced to forfeit two matches. With the new reschedule rule, we are allowing up to 2 reschedules per team per season to help prevent forfeits if a team can't play on a certain day.
Lastly, a guideline that MKU Staff are going to follow from now on. Last season there were several decisions made by staff on the same day the match was played that we ended up regretting or changing. Making decisions impulsively then changing them the next day obviously doesn't look good on us at all as a staff group; from now on we are going to wait at least 24 hours after a penalty case has been brought up to staff before making decisions so that all evidence can be taken into careful consideration by all staff members.
That's all for now, hope everyone is excited for next season! If you have any concerns feel free to reply to this thread.
This thread is to inform everyone of the changes MKU Staff has decided to make for Season 8. To start things off, we'd like to thank @Nato, @Lez and @Babou for their time on MKU Staff. In their place we welcome @Brandon, @Mars, @Stevens (the founder of MKU in 2014), and @RobertoRK to MKU Staff! We received many applications and narrowed it down to these four after a vote.
Season 8 will start on September 8th; we should have a confirmation thread out next weekend. We will continue using the Conference format, as we received positive feedback overall from teams regarding their experience with the format last season.
You may notice that we have removed rules for the other formats from the ruleset; for now MKU Staff do not intend on running other formats, so we removed the League / Circuit / Tournament rules from the ruleset for now to keep things clear for everyone reading.
New Rules
2.4.1. d. In the case of a tie between two or more teams within a conference, there will be a set of checks to determine the higher placing team (Tiebreakers):
1. W-D-L Record
2. Most amount of wins vs tied opponents
3. Conference Record
4. +/- between tied opponents
5. Overall +/-
1. W-D-L Record
2. Most amount of wins vs tied opponents
3. Conference Record
4. +/- between tied opponents
5. Overall +/-
These are the tiebreakers we used during Season 7; however, while making the conference format rules this slipped through the cracks, which caused some controversy last season between some teams. We've now clarified it in the ruleset.
2.4.1. e. ii. In the case of a team dropping out of the season, all parts of the season in which they forfeited a match will be turned into forfeits. Ex. A team forfeits a match in inter-conference matches and drops out during 2nd conference matches, all inter-conference and 2nd conference matches will be scored as forfeits, whilst all 1st conference matches will remain unchanged.
This rule was added to help prevent teams benefiting off of another team's drop; for example, in previous seasons, if a team wins all of their matches, but forfeits twice in the first half of the season, and drops during the second half, only the second half would have been changed to all forfeits, giving the two teams that had a free win on them a significant advantage. Now, if a team drops from the league, any portions of the season where the team had a forfeit will be changed to all forfeits.
2.4.2. Playoffs
a. Teams' placement in the main season will determine their playoff matches as follows:
b. In the case of two dropouts in a single conference, the 5th and 6th place teams in the opposite conference will play relegation matches against a semi-finalist loser in the division below.
c. The playoffs will be a 6-team single-elimination bracket with the top team from each conference getting a bye in the quarterfinals. In Division 1, there will be a 3rd place match between the semi-final losers.
d. Teams’ rosters will be locked during playoffs; no new players or transfers may be added after Week 8.
e. The results of the playoff matches will affect the next MKU Conference season as follows:
a. Teams' placement in the main season will determine their playoff matches as follows:
b. In the case of two dropouts in a single conference, the 5th and 6th place teams in the opposite conference will play relegation matches against a semi-finalist loser in the division below.
c. The playoffs will be a 6-team single-elimination bracket with the top team from each conference getting a bye in the quarterfinals. In Division 1, there will be a 3rd place match between the semi-final losers.
d. Teams’ rosters will be locked during playoffs; no new players or transfers may be added after Week 8.
e. The results of the playoff matches will affect the next MKU Conference season as follows:
There was a lot of confusion regarding playoffs last season; we've made the playoffs its own section in the ruleset and added some rules to clarify things. We also changed the teams that make playoffs from top 3 in each conference to top 2 in each conference and 2 wild card teams; this is to help prevent potentially unbalanced conferences within a division from screwing over teams in the stronger conference from playoffs.
3.1.4. MKU Conference Matches.
a. MKU Conference matches take place on Sundays at 2:00 PM and 3:00 PM ET by default.
a.i. In the case of Oceanian teams playing, consult the division admin / table for default times.
d. i. Teams may only request to reschedule two matches per season. The only exception being if rule 3.1.1 c. applies (where the opponent is required to reschedule).
a. MKU Conference matches take place on Sundays at 2:00 PM and 3:00 PM ET by default.
a.i. In the case of Oceanian teams playing, consult the division admin / table for default times.
d. i. Teams may only request to reschedule two matches per season. The only exception being if rule 3.1.1 c. applies (where the opponent is required to reschedule).
After observing last season, it seems no teams had any trouble with playing at 2PM and 3PM ET, so we are going to make these the official default times for matches from now on. Times will be much different for teams from Asia or Australia, and can potentially be many different times depending on the time of year and the teams you're playing against. As such, we encourage teams from these regions to check with their division admin or check the division table for their official times.
Since there are 2 matches a week, if a team was unable to play on a certain date last season they would be forced to forfeit two matches. With the new reschedule rule, we are allowing up to 2 reschedules per team per season to help prevent forfeits if a team can't play on a certain day.
3.5. Mii Names
h. Teams will be punished in the following way for violating these rules:
h. Teams will be punished in the following way for violating these rules:
1st offense: warning
2nd offense: -10 (-7 in 5v5) penalty
i. If two or more players on a team violate these rules at once, the team will not receive a warning and will receive a -10 (-7 in 5v5) penalty.
There have been many scenarios, ever since we added the rule about using your registry name, that teams have lost matches due to one person on their team forgetting to use their registry name. We decided to allow one warning per season for teams to prevent this from happening. The part at the end is to prevent a team from abusing this rule by having all of their members use a silly name for one match and not get penalized.Lastly, a guideline that MKU Staff are going to follow from now on. Last season there were several decisions made by staff on the same day the match was played that we ended up regretting or changing. Making decisions impulsively then changing them the next day obviously doesn't look good on us at all as a staff group; from now on we are going to wait at least 24 hours after a penalty case has been brought up to staff before making decisions so that all evidence can be taken into careful consideration by all staff members.
That's all for now, hope everyone is excited for next season! If you have any concerns feel free to reply to this thread.
