 Alright! Now that we have our weekly time we can schedule the season. That would put our first week of competition on Valentine's day evening so I'm not going to do that. For the reschedule of week 1 I'm going to go with the runner-up time, 9:00 PM EST on Wednesday, February 11th. Check out the Schedule page for more dates and times if that's what you're into.
The teams will be formed by the end of this weekend so expect hear from me with the team rosters by Monday night (2/2) at the latest. *CAPTAINS* If you have anybody lined up to be on your team, they need to register by tomorrow night (1/29, 10PM EST). If they have already registered but are listed here as a free agent, just email me and we'll clear it up. In future seasons, I don't expect that we'll have a need for a draft process and honestly, I'm not crazy about it. I do think it's necessary for this first season because we have no established teams. Once we start getting games under our belts, the PR scores will start changing and by the end of the season some teams will be over the PR cap. A player who improves throughout the year can be a big boost to a team by out-performing their slot but there's a cost. A team can't be over the cap so personnel decision will have to be made. The team's captain will need to release a player and sign a player who's PR gets the teams total under that cap. While it may seem harsh to have to cut someone from the team, I think it will be a really positive thing. Each season there will be a churn of players and as people move from team to team, more friendships will be made and the community will strengthen. Players can share the weaknesses of their former teammates with their new ones. Coaches can succeed by consistently finding undervalued players at all levels. Dynasties will rise and fall, legends will be made Kappa. Right now though, the most important thing is to try make some reasonably balanced teams while remaining open to as many people that would care to join us. The two main thing I want out of this season are for us to have a good time competing, and to find the problems that haven't occurred to me yet and fix them before the second season. I sincerely hope that you all will enjoy yourselves so much this season that you won't hesitate to come back for the beta season. Last, thanks to all of you who have given me encouragement! It's a big help in getting all this done.
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 Hi everyone! I'm ready to announce the details for our schedule leading into the start of the season.
First off, if you haven't already, please confirm your registration on the Member Info Form page. Check out the Players page for a list of who I have as confirmed and not. I'm updating this Players page manually each evening so don't worry when it does't update immediately. The deadline for confirming your spot is Wednesday, January 28 at 10:00 PM EST. Anyone who has not confirmed by that time will be removed from the player list and our mailing list. Second, since you were all so kind to sign up without actually knowing the specific time for league matches, I have created a poll to gauge what times would work for the most people. Fortunately, our format allows for flexible scheduling so don't worry if you have a conflict with whatever time we end up choosing. All responses for the poll need to be in by Tuesday, January 27th at 10:00 PM EST. So by this Thursday we'll have the schedule set and a more accurate idea of how many people will be participating. If we end up falling short of the minimum number of players needed (16 players for 4 teams), we have a few days to find others to fill in the open spots. The full list of players for this season by that weekend. With the list of players finalized, the captains will get together and hold a draft. Because this is the first season and we're working with fewer players, the draft format will a bit unusual to help ensure that all players find a team and the teams' skill levels are as close as we can get them. The target is to get all the players and teams finalized by Monday February 2nd. With that done teams will have almost a week to get acquainted, practice, and plan before submitting their class selections for week 1, which will be due on Sunday, February 8. The classes will be published on Monday, February 9th and the ban selections will be due on Wednesday, February 11th. That puts the true beginning of this alpha season, week 1 competition, on Valentine's day weekend. This is unfortunate because I'm sure it will cause some scheduling issues, but I'd rather be flexible and deal with those issues than push the start date back any further. If the poll results favor Saturday night, we may make a change for that week only, just to avoid inevitable conflict with V-day plans. Check out the Schedule page to vote on the match time and to see a list of the important dates. I'm so excited to get this going. I've never done anything like this so thanks for your patience with me. If you have any suggestions about how I could be doing things better, I would be really grateful for an email about it. -JediNinja Hi Team Hearth League! Things are progressing better than I had hoped for the our alpha season. We have enough people and now all I need is for everyone (who hasn’t already) to fill out the Member Info Form on our site.
Once I have everyone’s info, I will post a list of all the teams and free agents, and the captains can begin recruiting free agents for their team. Speaking of captains, we have many more people signed up as free agents than captains, and one or two more captains will help to align the player to captain ratio a little better. If you signed up as a free agent but would consider being a captain, please email me. Warning: wall of text incoming - feel free to ignore the following if you want. I’d like to take few moments to talk about the special sauce that makes our league possible - the “Player Rating” (PR) system. Last year I participated in a casual bowling league. My bowling average is about 150. For most league players, that’s really low. However, this league gave full handicap points. That meant that as long as I beat my average, my contribution to the team was just as important as another teammate whose average was above 200. The better bowlers on my team were always eager to help me improve, partially because the better I played, the better our team’s chances of winning would be. By the end of the season, we won the league I ended up being the MVP of the team just because I was able to consistently beat my very mediocre average. It was so much fun. I went from being self-conscious about my ability to feeling like a superstar. That was my inspiration for the Team Hearth League. I’m pretty sure that there’s no good way to handicap a Hearthstone game. Instead of handicaps, we can “seed” players similar to how it’s done in a school tennis meet. Your best player (1st seed) matches up against the opposing teams best player and so on for all the seeds. The matches of the best and worst players are equally important to the team’s success. To make this work, we need a system to measure a player’s ability so we can match them against a player of similar ability. That’s the Player Rating system. Winning and losing will adjust your PR in a way that, with enough games under your belt, should be a pretty accurate measurement of your ability. The player with the highest PR on a team will be the 1st seed, second highest PR will be 2nd seed and so on. Notice that there’s no direct method to ensure that your opponent has a comparable PR. If you’re the second best player on your team, you’ll play against the other team’s second best player. It’s quite possible for that player to have a much higher PR than you. This means that we need a way to prevent a team full of ringers. After all, it’s not much fun for a rank 15 player to get stomped by legend player who happens to be the lowest rated player on a stacked team. So we need a way to enforce parity between teams. We do this by having a “PR Cap”. The PR Cap is just a maximum number of total PR points that one team can have. Think of it as similar to a salary cap in pro sports. So it’s perfectly legal for a team to have really strong legend players in the 1st and 2nd seeds, but if they do that, they’ll have to sacrifice strength at the 3rd and 4th seed positions. Since 3rd and 4th seed wins count for just as much, this strategy compromises the team’s ability to win at all levels. A better strategy is to have well rounded team where you have a good chance to win at every level. For more details on how the Player Ratings and PR Cap systems work, check out the Rules section of our site. I’m excited to introduce what I am currently calling “Team Hearth League” (THL). THL is a team-based Hearthstone league designed to create a competitive community that is accessible to player of all skills levels.
For more details on how we achieve this, check out the About and Rules pages of our temporary website, thehearthleague.weebly.com. So here’s where we are now. The concept is roughly fleshed out. Sure, it will need some tweaking but the only way to find out what works and what doesn’t is to test it. I’m ready to test with an ‘alpha’ season. For the alpha season I would like 4-8 teams of four players. The length of the alpha season will depend on the number of teams we’re able to form. Once we have enough players, we will determine a schedule that works best for the majority of players. I’m looking for people who are interested in joining a fledgling community to shape its future, enjoying some good competition, and making some friends along the way. You can join as a player or a captain. Players will be listed as a ‘free agent’ available for pickup by a captain with an open spot. Captains are responsible for recruiting their own team or selecting from the pool of free agents to fill their roster. As a captain, once you create a team, that team is yours to control for as long as you want. If you’re interested in joining, please contact me from the Sign Up page on our site. Let me know if you’re interested in participating as a player or a captain and I’ll be in touch. Thanks and I hope to hear from you soon! -JediNinja |
AuthorThe THL blog is curated and edited by THL's Content Managers. All THL members are welcomed and encouraged to pitch ideas for articles they would like to see on the site. If you have an idea, please reach out to LotusKnight on Discord or via the THL Help email address: [email protected] Archives
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