New ladder season

[piranha]

The current ladder season is going to end on 31 August. After that we will run 3 ladder seasons of 4 month each per year.
As you might remember ladder games with more than 15 turns played are going to be ended and count towards this seasons ladder.

All the information can be found here: http://www.warbarons.com/wiki/ladder

[Maze]

Just wondering:
1. How many games were ended "regularly" in the last season (= with a winning player or team), in the several categories? And how many with this "+15 rule"? A percentage is OK.
2. What is the impact of this "+15 rule" = How many points were "earned" regularly and how many points were earned with the "+15 rule"? A percentage is OK.

I am not questioning the "+15 rule", just being curious.

As a optimization, this "15 turns" could be split per map: some maps are longer than others, so the cut-off could be perhaps x% of the average duration of the game, or a fixed but different amount of turns per map, e.g.
- Map X has average of 9 turns, developers put cut-off for ladder season on 6 turns
- Map Y is played in 45 turns on average, cut-off for ladder season = 30 turns"

Could also be taken into account: average points gained per (finished) map: if map X gives 25 points on average, then 25 points are divided for all the unfinished games that passed cut-off point for number of turns (currently 15). Division happens the same way as now, but a "relative" amount of points instead of a fixed amount of points.

Last but not least, why not change the game into a non-ladder game and let players continue all the unfinished games that are "over" for ladder, so players can keep enjoying the game. Especially when 15 turns is kept as cut-off: for small games it doesn't matter, they are mostly decided anyway by turn 15 AND you can start one game after another of those small games; however, for longer games, they only get interesting after turn 10-15-20... Before anyone starts shooting: This is not contradictory to the statement that the first 10-15 turns are quite important and I could even state that the first 10 turns are often more interesting than the last 10. But back to my suggestion: it's still a game and picking the fruit of your efforts is sweet so why not keep the game (as non-ladder)?

And for those who do not play the game for fun but for points and say "nah" to this proposal, maybe some voting system (do the players want to stop/continue the game as non-ladder?).

Maze
(played 5-6 ladder games in total:))

[Chazar]

Last but not least, why not change the game into a non-ladder game and let players continue all the unfinished games that are "over" for ladder, so players can keep enjoying the game.

I would love that option too, splendid suggestiven!

[Jeremy]

Because I'm guessing the rule is there so that losing teams can't drag the game out to avoid registering a loss. Converting the games to regular games would also allow them to not take their lumps for losing.

[Chazar]

Because I'm guessing the rule is there so that losing teams can't drag the game out to avoid registering a loss. Converting the games to regular games would also allow them to not take their lumps for losing.

Ugh, that would be bad! I read the suggestion as: count the game won/lost according to the points, but then instead of just ending the game, let it continue as a non-ladder game.

So each game counts once the season finishes, but there is an option for the game to continue for fun - without the game counting a second time.

And if one player considers the game boring, they can resign without registering a loss after it ends anyway.

[piranha]

It's a nice idea that you can continue the game. I'll see if we can do that this time.