If seeding is wanted, one possibility is to use a player's rating on Fizzer's 1v1 ladder. The map is similar at least.

https://war.app/LadderSeason?ID=0

You do not need to be currently active to have a visible rating. Currently the top-rated inactive players are listed on page 6: Eraserhead, Buns157, blobblob, Aika, John etc.

A player's past performance in this P/R league also matters.

Edited 2026-08-12 01:44:00

Ima just chime in to give my opionion in hopes it will help you Meld.

I personally never played this league, nor am i planning to. You probably understand especially since our last convo.

In my opinion the most important thing for you to do is be open to change. PR-League died and if it died, it was likely for a good reason. As otherwise, if it was ever that great, someone surely would have continued 3 years ago. Imo that alone shows that some changes are in order to make it more attractive and bearable.

I also do not think that this should be a grind league. We have that with the ladders from Fizzer which are just activity-based-lists, and QM.

Onto the main issue here. 3 Years is to long of a time gap that the previous participants still earn their spot (whether its A, B, C or whatever tier). This is the case in BOTH directions. someone could have been tier 'absolute-garbage-trash' but since then have improved to a really solid elite player. likewise someone could have been inactive the entire time, never touched the game and is just not as sharp anymore. Then you ofcourse have the new people that might not even have existed back then, and are now elite.

Id like to make a point briefly about elo.. because what we always see in a (properly) implemented elo system is that there is some form of 'placement matchmaking' happening. Everywhere. Because you do NOT want huge disparities of skill to play against each other. It creates a bad un-fun environment. The strong player is bored as hell. The weaker player gets destroyed. Both might quit out of frustration.
You and Me (and all elite players really) even make fun of the current ladder system to how pathetic it is that you get like 4 points per win and need 2 years to climb the system. Its the same issue, meaningless grinding to get to the top. So i dont understand why you are defending a system that does the same fundemental thing.

Imo, your biggest task, is to create a system where that reduces meaningless grinding as much as possible while being as fair as possible (duh)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Option 1 - Give Rufus, Tornado, Octane free pass to division A:
Thats just a flat no. Thats purely preferential treatment to a handful of people. Even if this is undoubtedly correct that they belong in A, it will create resentment. Furthermore, it doesnt deal with the issue of EVERYONE ELSE also needing a placement. I dont see any good argument for this sollution.

Option 2 - Full Restart / Placement Season:
Someone previous mentioned this. Imo this is an extremly fair approach. Everyone has it in their own hands to make the top placements with their own skill. A Rufus that says he belongs in A, now can prove it by just winning the placement Season. I wont go into detail on how you might implement it.. it doesnt really matter for this point. what matters is that with this way, you can see how much interest is, possibly even get a lot of active elite players to join in, who now can all prove to get where they deserve AND you just need ONE season for everyone to be placed fairly.

Option 3 - MTL Basis:
Considering its unclear where anyone belongs to, you could choose to say that the basis of the ranking is done via MTL Rating. You give a 2 Month grace period for people to join and play, and then rank them on their Rating.

I.. dont see this as a good idea really.. as the skill over-lap doesnt really exist, MTL being Multi-Template and this being inherently a single template. It is an option however, which is why i mentioned it. And it would possibly improve MTL activity.. (doubt it a bit but eh)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In my honest opinion.. option 2 is the only real viable option you have for the restart that is fair to everyone, reduces meaningless grinding, and places everyone to their deserved Division.

It should be noted however, that option 2 does not fix the grinding that would exist if you join in AFTER the placement season. As the current setup would still require you to slowly climb through the divisions. This is definetly also an aspect you should think about and come up with sollutions.

One idea could be to have the last / first spot jump 2 divisions. One simple idea that reduces the meaningless grinding by half... because a top player not in their true division, should be expected to win and jump 2 divisions each time.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And then from a health perspective sort of way... i wouldnt recommend to be so rigid to.. protect the past rules or past standings of PR-League.. like i said befor.. the skills from those player might wildly not apply anymore... and if your stance of 'no, we keep this system' causes people like Rufus to already say he is out.. you are just killing your own League befor it had even revived.

I personally can only recommend you.. dont rush to restart this league and when it starts, have it start properly. with a fair system. having talked to people. redoing the rules or the system with input of others. having a clot run it, properly testing everything. AND THEN restart it.

I am happy to help you there.. i think a lot of people are happy to help you. I mean, its the community that keeps up a lot of these leagues alive. Im sure everyone would be happy if a new league appeared, was healthy, and could run in the long term with minimal manual work.

But... dont keep rules of a league that had died with those rules already.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thats my take and my advice for you.
Like i said.. i wont play this league regardless of any state it will end up with. Tho i want you to succeed if you want to revive this. Hence why i spend my time giving my opinion.. (especially in a more serious note to which im usually am, joking, sarcastic remarks, etc)

I think Seraph’s hybrid proposal makes the most sense.

There’s a reason Meldarion is reviving the old league rather than starting one from scratch. 37 seasons means something. Nostalgia means something. Long time players have earned their way to the top through blood and sweat and tears. Long time players have earned the right to call themselves champions.

This isn’t an invitational. If you want to win the league, then put in the work to win the league. If you don’t want to participate then don’t participate. It feels a bit crazy to pretend Rufus has more right to a spot in A than a player who played 15 seasons and helped make the league into what it is.

That said, yes, it’s dumb having Rufus/tornado/Adrenaline/Octane beat the shit out of E-leaguers in order to earn the right to beat the shit out of D-leaguers. Start these players at the top of the rest based on ladder rating, hopefully in C. If the first season has to have a funky A/B/C1/C2/C3 structure to make this happen then we should do this and gradually morph it from bottom-heavy into a proper structure as the rankings get sorted out.

I will read this later and let you know who is correct and who should be ashamed of themselves.

Following Alex's submission I shall confirm whether or not he is still a nob

I appreciate everyone writing long replies and wanting the league to succeed :) please feel free to add opinions, know that I read them all and am/will be considering them all.

I understand the argument for just having a placement season, it's been three years, and normally a P/R would stay active to keep players moving towards where they ought to be - know that such a placement season would only be able to have 7 groups to effectively divide people afterwards, meaning if there's a similar size to what it used to be, group sizes for this particular season would be larger. At the point where there's multiple seasons necessary to fix placement, it just means extra work for me, and implementing ways for super promotion gets top players top as soon as 2-3 seasons anyway. So it'd have to be within one season.

I'll be polling people and talking to people before making final decisions. But feel free to leave opinions, both for and against, as well as ideas for how to decide a winner in a potential placement season.

If seeding is wanted, one possibility is to use a player's rating on Fizzer's 1v1 ladder. The map is similar at least.

https://war.app/LadderSeason?ID=0

You do not need to be currently active to have a visible rating. Currently the top-rated inactive players are listed on page 6: Eraserhead, Buns157, blobblob, Aika, John etc.

A player's past performance in this P/R league also matters.

Imo the best way of doing seedings is you make a small panel of about 2 reliable, trustworthy objective players. Let them decide with Meld. The goal is for seedings to be roughly correct. Exact precision is impossible for subjective ratings. I don't think it's a huge issue. I would give slightly generous seedings for the past oldies that have played before. It can be done with a bit of objectivity and common sense.

While I kind of understand everyone’s points (despite being displeased with Eraserhead’s and especially psykkoman’s tone), I believe that the closest to the truth is what Octane said.

It is important to some extent that the best players participate in the highest division, however, it is at least equally important that a given set of rules applies to everyone. If you need a reminder of that, check out a CL season run by Marcus Aurelius.

I started at the very lowest division despite having been at least of average skill for division A at the time. I promoted every season, until C, when the league shut down. I think I lost one game in the whole process.

Was that a bad experience? I wouldn’t say so. If Eraserhead and others want a direct path to A in order to be motivated enough to, we can consider offering one, but under a defined set of rules that will apply to everyone. It could be as simple as everyone with a MTL peak of 2200 elo or more is admitted straight to A as an extra player, increasing the number of relegation spots for that season by 1.

Flexibility is good, if it follows clear rules and applies to everyone equally. As far as I am concerned, I enjoy the experience of fighting through the divisions till I eventually reach my individual level of incompetence, so I will be the happiest continuing in C where I was.

Edited 2026-08-12 16:45:59

I climbed this twice, reaching A from group H and again got to B starting in F. The climb is the whole purpose of this league in my view, rewarding consistency and perseverance.
I don't see the point of doing reset, it goes against those ideas.

Many players probably went inactive or won't participate, but in my view this already benefits people joining now, they will easily save few seasons.

Do you know already how many players from season 37 will participate ? @ Master Meldarion

@ Widz, about 35 as of right now. Which would place new players at highest in D if we don't do a reset. Could obviously still climb if people are on vacation or w/e and still sign up.

I agree with Widz that the climb is part of the unique experience of this format. We shouldn't want all competitions to feel the same. Consistency being a requirement for success in an event is not the same as it being an activity competition, in my view, provided that the activity required is reasonable. That seems to be the case here.

I get the consistency climb reward argument if it was ran continuously but again factually from a three-year gap, simply keeping your place just rewards historical participation rather then current consistency. New players never had the chance to play and earn the higher ranks and now returning players get to keep a high one irrespective of their skill level now? I don't think the starting allocation is fair and that's why I think a one-off reset is the solution. Make it equal, let everyone earn a spot and we have the climbing experience for new players coming in from season 39.

It is not about skill level, it is and always was about results achieved in this competition. It could happen that the best players did not advance, that was part of the appeal. I'm probably around B-C skillwise, but I once failed to advance from the F group, and I think it is hilarious. If due to dropouts I'm in group A this season, I suspect I get crushed, but I will try to win regardless.

You could say it was unfair to new people it was not running for 3 years, but it was also not fair to the people already in it too, they did not get to play either. It did not die due to lack of interest from people, simply no one step up to organize it.

That argument could also be said for the next season, if there is a reset - every single person that joins season 39 will learn they just missed big chance in the reset tournament, and unlike the lucky people from 38 season they need to start at the bottom - I see it as much more unfair and demotivating situation.
Reset tournament 2 when?

As for players that dropped out, and want to return - I'm not sure how I feel. I'm not entirely against the idea of putting them back in the middle, but they should drop at least 1 rank, maybe even 2.
Someone leaving when in group A, returning few seasons later to A does not sit well with me, and even B feels a bit off.

:::sighs:::

Edited 2026-08-12 23:04:51

if there is not going to be equal groups for the restart, then I agree at least that only results from the most recent P/R season should count when assigning players to groups. So if 28 players returned from last season, the top 4 groups would be filled by them, and new players would start at best from group E.

For new players though, perhaps you could make multiple Group E's, and give equal promotion opportunities from each of those with a double-promotion on offer for top finisher in each group, or some kind of playoff between group winners in E rank to get a super promotion up several divisions.

Edited 2026-08-12 22:48:40

I just looked at season 37 and noticed interesting thing.
People who advocate for complete restart here did not played that season, no exception.

Something I haven't really seen mentioned here in regards to the reset season, why not just have temporary qualifier divisions?

We could keep the standard divisions, A-D, for the players who earned their rightful spot there in the most recent season, while also introducing special qualifier divisions for newcomers to the league, who will be placed anywhere from A-D based off their results. If this results in too many relegations for the standard divisions, which I foresee being the main issue, then we could always compact the standard divisions for this season, giving the players in those divisions more wiggle room to stay out of relegation territory, I think as a one season thing, it would work fine.

I think this could work as a nice middle ground for letting players who already earned their spot in high divisions keep their spot, while also giving the new players who didn't have a chance to move up during the 3 year hiatus a way to promote more quickly.




As for players that dropped out, and want to return - I'm not sure how I feel. I'm not entirely against the idea of putting them back in the middle, but they should drop at least 1 rank, maybe even 2.
Someone leaving when in group A, returning few seasons later to A does not sit well with me, and even B feels a bit off.

As someone who personally got screwed over by this because I took a 5 month hiatus after getting into division A, I think a 1 division relegation would be the best solution, anything more and you are too harshly punishing someone for not being able to keep up their level of activity at all times. Plus, if someone doesn't join any of their games, or boots even, which is basically what taking a break would be akin to, they'd just be relegated to the lower division, I never thought fully kicking someone out for not being able to play a season made any sense.

PR-League died and if it died, it was likely for a good reason. As otherwise, if it was ever that great, someone surely would have continued 3 years ago. Imo that alone shows that some changes are in order to make it more attractive and bearable.

To be fair, it ran for 37 seasons before it died. That's over 10 years. And props to Almosttricky for organizing it for 5 years straight.

Last season had around 80 players I think. If there are indeed less sign-ups this season and you remove inactive people, you might be able to use superpromotions and harsher promotion/relegation rules.

For example, MoD and Reza are inactive and were in division A. So there's already two free spots for the players in B. Beren was in B last season, but is inactive. That leaves three spots in B. Etc etc.

Previously, two people would demote from A. Why not temporarily make that three for the next season? The same goes for all other divisions of course.

Combine all of that with superpromotions from the lower divisions, and I think players should be approximately well sorted after two seasons, shortening the grind aspect a lot, but not eliminating it completely.

This Farah girl is talking my way out of division C and I don’t like it!

Are we here to be the fairest, participation awarding P/R league or are we here to make a prestigious elite P/R league as the original versions were?

If we are the first, give the participation trophies. Let the precedence of fairness and individual player's feeling of feeling they "deserve their ranks" be granted by keeping their ranks.

If we are the second, a fair reset is by far the correct option if we're objectively purely looking at it on what's best for the competition. This competition becomes tinpot if you're telling me you're continuing the results of 3 years ago. That Division A, I don't think even 2 survives to be in a Division A of today.

You know nostalgic is a big theme here, I understand why we want the players from 3 years ago, well I'm more of the nostalgic of what a good elite competition is, and we are going so far away from it, if we go for the first option. Creating a huge imbalance in the league and potentially not having elite players here is a sin.

Its not fair, I sympathise with the situation, I think you should be given generous seedings as some way of acknowledging your efforts. But feelings being ahead of what a proper P/R is meant to be is equally if not more wrong, be brave and go for the reset season and get a proper Division A/B/C to inevitably win in then this fairness dribble nonsense which is just harming the prestige and elitism of the P/R league going forward.