[geoschmo]

Well, what I had in mind was something a lot more simple then any kind of point calculation. The ladder in it's simplest form is as I stated below: you move up the ladder by beating people above you on the ladder. Losing to someone below you on the ladder does not affect your ranking, unless you lose to the person immedietly below you on the ladder. In that case you swap places so you only move down one spot.

How you move down that ladder is by being displaced by people beating others above you in the ranking and "leap frogging" over you. Or by being idle. Players that are idle for extended periods (No reports of winss or losses) get bumped down for inactivity. In most ladders that is within a few days. For an SEIV ladder that would need to be longer obviously.

I was not thinking of getting rid of two man games. What I was trying to come up with is a league that would permit 2 player or larger games, and allow for one ranking. This way everybody should be happy.

Those that play more would be more active on the ladder and might be higher on the ladder if they win, but I don't see that as a problem. And you can't move up unless you win anyway.

Most ladders are for 2 player games, but this could work for multiple player games by a couple modifications. These ideas were used in a Civ2 ladder and they seem to work well. In a game with more than two players, as a person is knocked out of the game they would report a loss to each player still alive in the game. So for a twenty player game if you ended up being in the middle of the pack you'd have something like ten wins and ten losses. Your eventual place in the ladder would depend on your ranking and the ranking of the other players involved at he time each loss is reported. This would occur each time someone left the game. So actually a player in a big game wouldn't neccesarily be any less active then those playing 2 man games, since people would be getting knocked out all during the game. You don't wait till the end to report losses, they get done right away.

You could have team games. In a team game each member of each team would report a loss to each member of the other teams.

Also you might think since you can't move up by beating players below you there is no incentive to play them. But this isn't correct. Keep in mind you don't report till the end, and the other person could be ahead of you by the time the game ends. Also you have to be active to keep your ranking. You have to play someone.

Getting someone else to help with the league does not fix the problem of being tedious. It just means someone else has to deal with it. It's not a long term solution. Automating the league is a long term solution. Myleauge.com isn't the only way to automate it to be sure, but it's one way. THe main concern I could see is taht you have to register with their site and you might get some more spam. Does anyone think that would be a big enough problem that they would not want to be part of it?

Geoschmo