User:ShiggyGiddy/Babby Qualification

Work in progress!

Motivation

We have no good system in place that allows new teams into the cup while at the same time gets rid of the dead meat. Unless a manager stops doing the minimal work required to play, a board that is already in the cup can hardly die. On the other hand, new boards or boards that fell from grace have to jump through hoops and still have to consider themselves lucky if they are allowed in.

In the past, we any attempts to fix this lead to playing even more matches, either by increasing the Babby size or hosting a qualifier. An often proposed solution to this problem is what is usually referred to as #XXteams, a drastic cut in the teams allowed to participate. In this proposal, I want to outline why these approaches are not feasible in the long run and propose a tiered system that awards Babby spots by different means.

Current solutions

What is wrong now

To sum up, this is what I feel is wrong with our current system and/or approach:

• There are more teams than we have Babby spots.
• Regardless, the Mega Babby might be too big.
• More games means a higher demand for streamers. We might not always have the numbers we do now.
• Once a team is in the Babby/Elite cup circle, they hardly ever leave again, even if they are bad/ugly/unpopular.
• New teams are treated badly. Any effort they may make beyond showing up after 6 months with an export is hardly rewarded.
• The only ways we have to decide whether a team is eligible for a Babby are more matches or a Commissioner/4CCC decision.

As of now, we hardly show returning teams the door, even if their performance, aesthethics, and popularity all seem to be terrible. At the same time, we make it insanely hard for new teams to get a foot in, making sure they lose most of the motivation they might have to build up a team by the time they are eligble.

In other words, we hardly reward any effort made that goes beyond making a basic export.

What is wrong with #XXteams

While the general idea of a hard cut seems easy and fixes most of the obvious problems, there still are some major issues with the idea:

• The selection process is badly defined.
• If done by a council, it is highly arbitrary.
• If done by polls, it is easily rigged.
• The poll approach heavily relies on the 'true fan' concept, which implies that the majority of viewers watch the cup for mostly one team (see below).
• Once teams are in, they are in, and vice versa. Again, we will have teams outside of the cup that are more deserving than teams in the cup after a while.
• It does not ensure that the teams selected make an effort afterwards.
• In other words, it is no long term solution and requires a constant reevaluation that faces the same problems as the initial selection process.

As for the 'true fan concept', it is highly questionable in the first place, as a fair share (if not the majority) of the viewers watch the cup for what it is, bandwaggoning any team whose striker and goalhorn they like. Furthermore, even if every single viewer was a 'true fan', the numbers of the less popular boards would be so close together that any difference in votes/attendance for a particular team would most likely be within the margin of error. Given that regulars of slow boards hardly visit their boards every day but moderation is still on their toes, they might never see the poll they should fill out. Instead, people determined to rig such polls would have it very easy. In the end, we would have a handful of boards with similar numbers and no real grounds to make a fair cut. To top it off, they would probably be the same boards we suspected of being difficult to agree on in the first place, leaving us with hardly any new insight.

What to go for

In contrast to the issues pointed out above, a new system should meet the following criteria:

• Punish low effort.
• Award additional effort.
• Have teams qualify based on a combination of skill, aesthethics, and popularity/demand (not just by performance).
• Remove arbitrariness as much as possible.
• Be a continuous process and thus, suitable for long term.
• Scale well with more/fewer teams.
• Possibly reduce the number of games.

The tiered system

Soon.

Remarks

There are some aspects that are not part of this proposal, but should be mentioned as they are closely connected.

• Streamers
• New teams in invitationals
• Verification
• ....

Not done.

Appendix

Babby criteria

A new team has to meet the following criteria to be eligible for a Babby:

• A verified manager.
• A logo.
• Three kits (one of them a GK kit).
• A roster that seems board-related.
• The corresponding board must exist for ~6 months.
• The commissioner wills it.

A returning team has to meet the following criteria to be eligble for a Babby:

• A verified manager (unless they are chosen to be an auto-pilot team).

In both cases, this does not take 'have an export ready by the deadline' into account.