Redoing the reranking week

[Luther Lansfeld]

Well, is our primary goal to make things more interesting or to reduce writeups? Interest waning is a big issue in Week 6; I know I struggle to vote in Week 6 because it is a long process and anything to make that more interesting is good. I'm not sure if more writeups are necessary; I think rerank week matches would do fine without writeups sine uh they've never had writeups. Their existence is unneeded.

I'll phrase it this way; as a casual voter (or someone who doesn't do writeups), I will vote in rerank week more readily if it is changed to a more palatable format. I will never vote in NR. Something that affects how interesting the DL is what I think should be focused on because NR just appeals to such a small number of people, since it is really hard for even avid RPG players to vote in. I have played a ton of RPGs and I find myself barely being able to vote on anything.

[Yakumo]

(To Djinn, not Ciato) The problem with that answer is that the only real complaints of burnout I've heard as far as site work is concerned is from the missing comments, because there were often something like 10-12 or even more of them to do and they got shoved onto one, maybe two people.  Also, missing comments have more of a content problem than writeups do since they're more original stuff and writeups are more spinning a couple abilities to hype a character up, with a line or two about the character themselves.  Now, if I'm wrong on the burnout front feel free to have the writers or editors speak up, because a lot of this has been hashed out in IRC where not everyone is around to see it so it's very possible I'm missing something.

I feel that the problem with rerank week as it stands now is that very few people actually care, and leaving the reranking pools the same as they are is not going to fix that problem.  Now, it's possible that there's a way to make it more interesting without adding even a little work to the mix but nothing pops to mind right away for me.  I guess a possible compromise would be to use CK's system but leave them writeupless and just leave the current voting style in there, so at least you cut down the ridiculous slog of matches into a reasonable number, but I don't know if that would save interest or not.  It would at least be better than the status quo, though.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Well, is our primary goal to make things more interesting or to reduce writeups? Interest waning is a big issue in Week 6; I know I struggle to vote in Week 6 because it is a long process and anything to make that more interesting is good. I'm not sure if more writeups are necessary; I think rerank week matches would do fine without writeups sine uh they've never had writeups. Their existence is unneeded.

I'll phrase it this way; as a casual voter (or someone who doesn't do writeups), I will vote in rerank week more readily if it is changed to a more palatable format. I will never vote in NR. Something that affects how interesting the DL is what I think should be focused on because NR just appeals to such a small number of people, since it is really hard for even avid RPG players to vote in. I have played a ton of RPGs and I find myself barely being able to vote on anything.

I'm mostly quoting this because Ciato's take on it is more or less how I see it. I also don't see why the writeups for the redone reranking system are necessary either: they can be just as easily applied writeup-less, and I'm not sure if giving these flavor text would really raise interest significantly.

[Dhyerwolf]

Just polling: Would people who don't vote now vote on the 6 matches, but not if the round robin was scaled back 2/3rds in size?

[superaielman]

I don't think it'll change the apathy much. People don't really care about the round robin matches outside of the really hardcore voters, and that's bad. It is a struggle to get people to care enough about the round to vote on.

[Yakumo]

Well, if there's only 9 matches to vote on instead of, what is it currently, 56 matches or something ludicrous like that?  That'll probably help out a bit right there.  I still think putting in writeups would help but even cutting the number down that much would do something.

[Dhyerwolf]

15 by my method (9 by CK's...which uh...I honestly like the 6 match setup is better in terms of fairness and balance, which is a bad thing).

Super, will the apathy change much either way? I'm not sure the cut from 15 to 6 is a major one for internal voters (Can't say for external much). I guess my gut is that I'm not overly fond of the 1 match gateway. Just seems like to could easily lead to weird results based on a worthy upgrader drawing someone who deserved a downgrade, but was a semi specific spoiler.

[DjinnAndTonic]

I vote on rerankings as they are now with enough interest, but I can safely say that I would pay more attention to each individual match if there were only 15 total instead of 56.

[Yakumo]

CK's version isn't a one match gateway, it's two matches for the champ plus one between the two people he's facing and no chance for the runner up to upgrade at all, and he has to have a better record than one of the two to upgrade.  What's yours, the same basic thing but with the runner up included?

[Dhyerwolf]

Yes, mine essentially is the same thing with the runner up thrown into the mix (Which makes upgrades less elusive for the champ and gives the runner up a shot at least!).

[Sir Donald 3.2]

--Institute using the bottom rankings either way. I guess I never thought of anything like this because I never really thought about rankings before, but his is much better than basing who goes to pools based on how the person who they lost to does.
--I don't mind single matches (I do prefer round robins for the sake of balance, but if single matches can do a lot better on keep interest up, it wouldn't be a bad tradeoff). However, the one thing I liked about week 6 was that I always knew that I could just basically completely avoid writeups. So I'm definetely wary of wanting to create more of them. This could vary depending on whether we think we are going to looking at a 7 week turnaround or an 8 week turnover, and what potential other extra things we might be wanting to stuff in (Like NR matches).
--My gut is that my preference is to cut the 6 person round robins to 4. That cuts it from like 42 to...15? matches, which is still a major decrease and makes voting far easier. While it doesn't have the simplicity that single matches does, it still keeps writeups out of the game, balances upgrade pools better, and the 3 person round robin feels notably worse for reasons already pointed out (Upgraders fighting for 1 upgrade spot, rock-paper-scissors situations). Are there any weird ties that could come up with this method?

Dhyer in his 1st and 3rd points speak for me as well.  But I'll actually go ahead and put a vote behind this stance.  It is, indeed, a nice hybrid of Elfboy's suggestion and our current practice.  (The other possible merge would kill the writers/editors.)  I'll go further and say that having a boundary line of 0.500 is quite elegant, IMO.  More = Higher Division, Less = Lower Division, Exactly 0.500 = Status Quo

For those of you who would care, I also had an alternate strategy that would also mitigate the draw problem in Elfboy's idea and keep the direct impact, but would require a rerank period of 2 weeks.  (Which would mean no break week, especially if the main Season (i.e. sans Rerank Week) would be 6 weeks.)
Basically, I would have the lesser champ against either Last Season's Promoted Champ if (s)he lost in Week 1 (Yes, I have that hardcoded) or the 2nd Lowest upper in Match 1 and the Runner-Up vs the Lowest Upper in Match 2.  These would be in the 1st week.  In the 2nd week, Loser 1 faces off against Winner 2 in Match 3.  Upper Division: Winners 1 & 3.  Lower Division: Losers 2 & 3.

[Scar]

I don't know if this has been suggested, but I'm jumping into the conversation!

What if you let the winner from the the respected lower division face off against the opponent who lost to the eventual champion their first week of fighting?

Like if we take last season for example, Gades lost to Fou-Lu in week one. since he lost to the person who smashed everyone, he never really got a chance to shine that season. Let him face off against the winner of heavy.

Or something...

[Sir Donald 3.2]

The problem with that stance is that the match has a stake if the Godlike loses.  It would be akin to if the Vikings win the Super Bowl that Alabama would face off against the Browns for a Pro/SEC spot.  Or Virginia Tech (lost to Alabama in Week 1) would face off against Boise State with the former's membership in the ACC on the line.

In this case, you would be punishing the first loser to the eventual champion by giving him/her the "do-or-downgrade" match.

I will say, however:  If the main problem with all of these methods is the need to write writeups within 24 hours, why don't we just move Rerank Week for Season X to the Semifinals or Finals of Season X+1 if we adopt a method requiring writeups?  (Again, this problem Dhyer's method does not have... which means that we should've considered for more options before launching a poll.)