CommunityFortress

Lately I've been pretty critical of the Team Warfare League's TF2 admins, calling them everything from lazy to stupid.  I don't apologize for any of that.  I'm kind of a jerk, and I've made peace with that.  Also, most of my comments appeared to be pretty spot-on by the way the league was being run (or run into the ground, as it were).  Still, I had faith that, with the right set of admins, the league could once again bring in some of the top-tier teams in future seasons and build itself back up into a legitimate competitor for best league.

And then the playoff brackets were released.

Now, don't get me wrong, going into these playoffs, I wasn't prepping myself to pounce all over TWL no matter what the brackets actually looked like.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  I was more of the opinion that it would take a group of complete idiots and a failure of truly epic proportions to screw up the simple art of playoff bracketing...

For those unfamiliar (which is apparently only the TWL admins, but I digress), a standard eight-team playoff bracket should look something like this:

1-8

4-5

------

3-6

2-7

The one seed plays the eight seed and the four plays the five in the top half, whereas the two seed plays the seven seed and the three plays the six in the bottom half.  Generally, over the course of a season, the top two teams have proven themselves to be the best and, barring anything unforeseen or unfortunate, they will likely meet in the finals, and you want to give them the chance to have this happen.

Apparently, though, TWL admins have either never watched sports, never payed attention to previous gaming playoffs (maybe they didn't make them?), or just didn't give a crap, because they threw the traditional method out the window in favor of a ludicrous new method that will see all the top seeds playing before the finals and thus making the actual finals as uninteresting as humanly possible.

Here are how the TWL playoff seeds work:

1-8

2-7

-----

3-6

4-5

For the record, here are some links to each division's brackets: Div 1, Div 2, Div 3, Div 4

Perhaps what is most interesting about this way of doing things is that the admins clearly knew the basic concept of the top seed playing the bottom seed and on down the line, but just weren't quite smart enough to put two and two together and drop the second seed into the bottom half of the brackets.

Further maddening is the choice to have sixteen teams in the division three playoffs even though there are only twenty-four teams in the standings, and then splitting the division four playoffs into two groups of eight instead of combining the total top eight from both divisions.  Is it too much to ask for some consistency?  On second thought, with idiocy this rampant at hand, yes, it probably is.

Let's go ahead and break this stupidity down by divisions...

DIVISION 1

Well, I'll be the first to say that even having playoffs in division one is pointless.  This division basically folded, there were only seven teams to begin with, and we all know TONY HAWK'S PRO SKATERS is going to win.  I do find the three-team playoffs kind of comical, though, especially the fact that they're giving the team that is going to steamroll the competition anyway a bye in the first round.

DIVISION 2

This is where the asshattery truly begins.  Over the course of the season it was pretty much established that the best two teams in division two were Gravity Gun Grenadiers (GGG) and c.h.a.r.l.e.s.  Granted, charles was probably only the second-best team because they had Seagull ringing in every match, but if other teams want to be dicks and run invite players every week in the lower divisions, that's out of the control of the rest of us.

Now, common sense would hold that GGG (the one seed) would be placed in the top half of the bracket, with charles rounding out the bottom half.  These teams would likely continue their winning ways and, barring an upset (which is definitely possible in a fairly even division two, but still) would meet in the finals.

But of course, common sense takes a back seat when the TWL admins are at the wheel.  As it stands, Gravity Gun Grenadiers and charles should meet in round two, which leaves the winner to face a lower seed in the finals.  And while there is definitely potential for the division two finals to be very entertaining anyway, it still sucks that the ball had to be dropped in such a way that the best match-up may take place in the second round.

DIVISION 3

If you thought that the set-up for division two was mind-numbingly idiotic, just wait until you get a load of division three.  As mentioned previously, the division three playoffs play host to sixteen teams, or sixty-six percent of the overall teams signed up.  Why are their sixteen teams in these playoffs when, quite frankly, ten of them may not even win a round?  Who knows?  I'm done trying to rationalize this crap.

What's worse, though, is that the top four teams, AcE (who captured the one seed after their leader, a TWL admin, made a questionably biased decision that caused Synchronicity, the two seed, to lose a match they otherwise would have won), Synchronicity, gr, and Team PROkemons, are all located in the top half of the bracket.

Yes, that's right.  AcE and Synchronicity, the top two teams, are set to play in the second round of a four-round, single-elimination playoff bracket.  Honestly, if I wasn't staring at the bracket right now (well, not right now, since I'm typing, but I have it open in a separate tab), I would probably believe I was making this up.

This also means that one of the top four teams in the league is going to be playing a totally unbalanced match against one of the to 5-8 seeds in the finals.  Division three isn't like division two.  The balance of teams is much more top-loaded, and will likely lead to an incredibly boring steamroll of a finals match that no one will want to shoutcast and even less people will want to watch.

DIVISION 4

What's really sad is that I feel like the set-up for these playoffs is somehow getting dumber as I go on down the line.  I wouldn't have thought that possible after division three, but the TWL admins yet again found a way to sucker punch me with a fistful of retard.

Division four had a total of twenty-three teams signed up, split into two subdivisions (one with twelve teams and the other, obviously, with eleven).  Why was division four split into two subdivisions when division three was not?  Who the hell knows?  Amazingly, instead of taking the overall top eight teams (the top four from each of the two subdivisions, respectfully), the TWL admins thought it wise to set up two separate eight-team brackets, one for each subdivision.

That's correct.  A division with eleven teams signed up, three of which were inactive, has an eight-team playoff bracket.  This isn't little league, folks.  Not everyone deserves to make the playoffs just for showing up.  That undermines the entire point of playing a season and earning your bracket seed.  And again, the brackets are set up in the maddeningly stupid manner that will see the top two seeds in each one playing in round two.

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I was going to write a long, thoughtful summary, but I honestly can't think of much else to write.  My brain is starting to hurt from trying to process all of the illogical drivel I've been exposed to by staring at these TWL brackets for so long today.

The bottom line is essentially that it's hard for me (and I hope for anyone else) to see TWL as any kind of a legitimate league when the admins are so blatantly incompetent that they can screw up simple playoff bracketing.  They have completely undermined the competition in TWL and made it almost pointless to even play the regular season out, especially when they are forcing awful maps like Indulge on us.

Until something changes and new admins with a damned clue sign up and start running this league like they give a crap, I think it's up to the rest of us to stop endorsing it.  Most of the top teams already have, and this will probably be the final straw for a lot of the mid-level ones.  I know it is for my team.