Introduction:
Hello. This post is to inform the community that we are going to experiment with a new format for the MKU “League format”. It is encouraged that you read the entire post as this format is more complex than the 10-week WCL format. If anyone has any questions after, feel free to post them in this thread or DM a staff member and we will answer as soon as we can.
There’s always a reason to why change occurs, so here are the main reasons why we are changing formats:
New League Format:
The new league format mock I will be using below is currently rating the teams from their position in MKU overall after week 7 of this season.
The new format will be divisions of 12 which will be separated into two conferences of 6. You will play everyone in your conference twice, and every team in the other conference once meaning the season has 16 matches in it.
How the conferences are decided would be the following:
The numbers beside the teams represent their seed going into the season (Seeds in this example based off Week 7 updated this season, actual seeds will be power rankings from past seasons). Both conferences add up to the number 39 making the conference even in strength. For division 2, the next 12 teams would be sorted from 1-12 and distributed the same way.
The season will be 8 weeks and there will be a playoff that runs for 2 weeks. You might be asking yourself how a season can be 8 weeks if you play 16 games and the answer is simple: 2 matches will be each week (Both on Sunday). We’re working on the times but we’re leaning towards 1:30pm EST (6:30 GMT, 7:30 CST) and regular MKU Time (3:00pm EST, 8:00pm GMT, 9:00pm CST). This is subject to change. The playoffs will take place over weeks 9 and 10 which will end off the league.
Example of a Season
Here’s an example of a season to make it clearer and to help explain the playoff system.
This would be the season results:
You may notice a couple of changes. Firstly, there are no individuals on the main tables. We want to emphasize the team aspect of the game and also make the standings more visually appealing, 2 conference and individuals would look like a mess. But don’t worry, all individuals will be kept and publicized still, they will just be below in the form of the lists the division admins put below such as this.
Another change you will notice is there is no points column, instead, there is a GB (Games Behind) column. We have decided to remove the defensive (Bonus) point for losing by 20 or less. A win will be a win and a loss will be a loss. The games back column shows how many games behind you are of the conference leader. As you can see Zealous is 4 games ahead of Vertex because they have 4 more wins. Wins are equal to 1, ties to 0.5, and losses to 0.
The last change you’ve probably noticed is the tags on the left-most column of the team names. This is a placeholder for now, what we want to do is incorporate team’s logos into the standings (the one on your team’s registry page on MKC) into the standings if we can make it look nice to add some swagger to and personality to the tables. If a team does not have a logo the tag in the coloured box beside your team name will just be used as the default option.
As stated before, each week will be two matches, the schedule would look like this (this example the season starts February 1st, 2019, ignore the “Time” column”).
This one should read "Inter-Conference play, not inter-division"
A question that may come to mind is how will transfers work? In the spirit of the league, it is the fairest if everyone plays every team at their same strength which means the transfer window will be after the Inter-Division Play meaning the transfers would only be eligible to play the Second set of conferences matches (matches 12-16 + playoffs). The transfer window will open after week 5 (Matches 9 and 10) and close before week 6 starts (matches 11/12) with the transferred players only being eligible to play match 12 and onwards, not match 11, as it is the final inter-league play match. Another thing to note is that you can not MVP a division once you transfer as you will not have enough matches played even if you 5/5 so a hidden bonus is no late game cheese MVP steals!
Season-ending
Once a season ends, every position in a conference means more than the next, meaning there is always something to fight for.
1st in a conference: Make playoffs, get a bye in the quarterfinals
2nd in a conference: Make playoffs, host the quarterfinals against the third place in the other conference
3rd in a conference: Make playoffs, do not host the quarterfinals against the second place in the other conference
4th in a Conference: Do not make playoffs and do not have to fight for relegation, your league ends here
5th in a Conference: Fight for relegation week 10 against a semi-finalist loser in the division below
6th in a Conference: You are relegated, your league ends here
Playoffs
The playoffs will take place weeks 9 and 10. Week 9 will be the Quarterfinals and the Semifinals and week 10 will be the Finals and the promotion/relegation series). The finals will be a best 2 out of 3.
Based on the season above, this is an image (badly made) of what a playoff bracket would look like. Since we need teams from the 2nd division to show how the promotion/relegation series work I added a division 2 playoffs using the next 6 top teams results wise from this season (Division 3).
What your rewards are for the playoffs:
Season Closing
Once everything is done, this is how the teams will be power ranked using the mock season:
Conclusion:
Note that it’s likely we won’t get a perfect interval of 12. This format works for 10 and 8 teams as well, but for 6 teams or less it does not, so there’s a chance the bottom division could have the old format depending on the number of teams that sign up.
We understand this new format is quite a change from what the Mario Kart community has been doing for the past decade but we hope teams are as excited to try and make this work as we are. This will unquestionably be the most hype and biggest competitive league project the Mario Kart community has done and we are excited for everyone to be part of that history. Again, if you have any questions, feel free to post them here or DM a staff member on discord.
And very lastly, the projected start date for season 7 will be Sunday, April 28th (Sunday after Easter). Happy Karting!
Hello. This post is to inform the community that we are going to experiment with a new format for the MKU “League format”. It is encouraged that you read the entire post as this format is more complex than the 10-week WCL format. If anyone has any questions after, feel free to post them in this thread or DM a staff member and we will answer as soon as we can.
There’s always a reason to why change occurs, so here are the main reasons why we are changing formats:
- Motivation – let's be honest, as soon as your team drops sometimes even 2 games, your season is over, there is no chance to win at all. Nothing is worth fighting for as much as the benefits are very little between the rest of the positions. With his new format, every position in the division provides a benefit over the next so there’s always something worth fighting for
- Variety – With this new format there will be more variety in terms of which teams you get to play. Variety provides more excitement, fresh challenges, and potentially new rivalries to be made, who doesn’t love that?
- Hype – Many divisions in the current format are decided way before week 10 or the “big” match doesn’t fall into place week 10 for a battle for the banner head to head. With this new format, the last weeks will always be the most hype. This will also open way more opportunities for casting big matches and being able to have more viewers for them
- Power Rankings – This new league format makes easier and more objective “final rankings” of the season to be used for the season after. Once we implement this format we want to try and stay truer to the results from the prior season when seedings the season after instead of current roster strength. Obviously with teams dying/joining or drastic roster changes (with the request by the team) it won’t be perfect. This is the fairest way to create power rankings.
New League Format:
The new league format mock I will be using below is currently rating the teams from their position in MKU overall after week 7 of this season.
The new format will be divisions of 12 which will be separated into two conferences of 6. You will play everyone in your conference twice, and every team in the other conference once meaning the season has 16 matches in it.
How the conferences are decided would be the following:
The numbers beside the teams represent their seed going into the season (Seeds in this example based off Week 7 updated this season, actual seeds will be power rankings from past seasons). Both conferences add up to the number 39 making the conference even in strength. For division 2, the next 12 teams would be sorted from 1-12 and distributed the same way.
The season will be 8 weeks and there will be a playoff that runs for 2 weeks. You might be asking yourself how a season can be 8 weeks if you play 16 games and the answer is simple: 2 matches will be each week (Both on Sunday). We’re working on the times but we’re leaning towards 1:30pm EST (6:30 GMT, 7:30 CST) and regular MKU Time (3:00pm EST, 8:00pm GMT, 9:00pm CST). This is subject to change. The playoffs will take place over weeks 9 and 10 which will end off the league.
Example of a Season
Here’s an example of a season to make it clearer and to help explain the playoff system.
This would be the season results:
You may notice a couple of changes. Firstly, there are no individuals on the main tables. We want to emphasize the team aspect of the game and also make the standings more visually appealing, 2 conference and individuals would look like a mess. But don’t worry, all individuals will be kept and publicized still, they will just be below in the form of the lists the division admins put below such as this.
Taken from the current Division 1
Another change you will notice is there is no points column, instead, there is a GB (Games Behind) column. We have decided to remove the defensive (Bonus) point for losing by 20 or less. A win will be a win and a loss will be a loss. The games back column shows how many games behind you are of the conference leader. As you can see Zealous is 4 games ahead of Vertex because they have 4 more wins. Wins are equal to 1, ties to 0.5, and losses to 0.
The last change you’ve probably noticed is the tags on the left-most column of the team names. This is a placeholder for now, what we want to do is incorporate team’s logos into the standings (the one on your team’s registry page on MKC) into the standings if we can make it look nice to add some swagger to and personality to the tables. If a team does not have a logo the tag in the coloured box beside your team name will just be used as the default option.
As stated before, each week will be two matches, the schedule would look like this (this example the season starts February 1st, 2019, ignore the “Time” column”).
This one should read "Inter-Conference play, not inter-division"
A question that may come to mind is how will transfers work? In the spirit of the league, it is the fairest if everyone plays every team at their same strength which means the transfer window will be after the Inter-Division Play meaning the transfers would only be eligible to play the Second set of conferences matches (matches 12-16 + playoffs). The transfer window will open after week 5 (Matches 9 and 10) and close before week 6 starts (matches 11/12) with the transferred players only being eligible to play match 12 and onwards, not match 11, as it is the final inter-league play match. Another thing to note is that you can not MVP a division once you transfer as you will not have enough matches played even if you 5/5 so a hidden bonus is no late game cheese MVP steals!
Season-ending
Once a season ends, every position in a conference means more than the next, meaning there is always something to fight for.
1st in a conference: Make playoffs, get a bye in the quarterfinals
2nd in a conference: Make playoffs, host the quarterfinals against the third place in the other conference
3rd in a conference: Make playoffs, do not host the quarterfinals against the second place in the other conference
4th in a Conference: Do not make playoffs and do not have to fight for relegation, your league ends here
5th in a Conference: Fight for relegation week 10 against a semi-finalist loser in the division below
6th in a Conference: You are relegated, your league ends here
Playoffs
The playoffs will take place weeks 9 and 10. Week 9 will be the Quarterfinals and the Semifinals and week 10 will be the Finals and the promotion/relegation series). The finals will be a best 2 out of 3.
Based on the season above, this is an image (badly made) of what a playoff bracket would look like. Since we need teams from the 2nd division to show how the promotion/relegation series work I added a division 2 playoffs using the next 6 top teams results wise from this season (Division 3).
What your rewards are for the playoffs:
- Quarter Finals Loser: Nothing happens, your league is over
- Semifinals loser: You can not win your division, you will play a team who finished 5th in a conference in the division above you to fight for promotion (D1 this won’t be the case since you can’t move up)
- Finals loser: You do not win the division, you are automatically promoted to the division above
- Finals winner: You win the division, you are automatically promoted to the division above.
Season Closing
Once everything is done, this is how the teams will be power ranked using the mock season:
- Zealous (D1 Champions)
- Vestoid (D1 Finals losers)
- Divine Phoenix (D1 Semis loser with the better regular season record)
- Vertex (D1 semis loser with the worse regular season record)
- High Definition (D1 quarters loser with the better regular season record)
- Daeugghe_Chosen (D1 quarters loser with the worse regular season record)
- World Friend Star (4th place in D1 conference with better regular season record)
- Arcadia Sky (4th place in D1 conference with worse regular season record)
- Mushroom Team X (Division 2 champions)
- Aurora (Division 2 final losers)
- Melee X (Promotion/Relegation series winner who had the better regular season, if different divisions, team from the higher division)
- Wii Elite Clan (Promotion/Relegation series winner who had the worse regular season, if different divisions, team from the lower division)
- Champi Brothers (Promotion/Relegation series loser who had the better regular season, if different divisions, team from the higher division)
- Yoshi Family (Promotion/Relegation series loser who had the worse regular season, if different divisions, the team from the lower division)
- DirtMK (6th place in D1 conference with the better regular season)
- Blizzard (6th place in D1 conference with the worse regular season)
- – (D2 quarters loser with the better regular season)
- – (D2 quarters loser with the worse regular season)
- – (4th place in D2 conference with better regular season)
- – (4th place in D2 conference with worse regular season)
- – (D3 champions)
- – (D3 Finals Losers)
- – (D2/D3 promotion/relegation series winner)
- – (D2/D3 promotion/relegation series winner)
Conclusion:
Note that it’s likely we won’t get a perfect interval of 12. This format works for 10 and 8 teams as well, but for 6 teams or less it does not, so there’s a chance the bottom division could have the old format depending on the number of teams that sign up.
We understand this new format is quite a change from what the Mario Kart community has been doing for the past decade but we hope teams are as excited to try and make this work as we are. This will unquestionably be the most hype and biggest competitive league project the Mario Kart community has done and we are excited for everyone to be part of that history. Again, if you have any questions, feel free to post them here or DM a staff member on discord.
And very lastly, the projected start date for season 7 will be Sunday, April 28th (Sunday after Easter). Happy Karting!