Victory Points and bad outcomes

[Cult of Dionysus]

Out of curiosity, what are the VP settings in your leagues? In DLF PL, we use the following settings:

VP per win – 2
VP per tie – 1
VP per loss – 0
VP per top 1/3 scoring – 2
VP per middle 1/3 scoring – 1
VP per bottom 1/3 scoring – 0

[skip]

I'm not presently in a league that uses VPs but the last one I was in scored it very differently than many others I've seen:

Winning a game was 8 points
Top scoring team got 12 points, 2nd best was 11, and so on...

[maxhyde]

I'm not presently in a league that uses VPs but the last one I was in scored it very differently than many others I've seen:

Winning a game was 8 points
Top scoring team got 12 points, 2nd best was 11, and so on...

Yeah this system probably reduces randomness even more than the VP systems would typically.

Anyway I understand but I play in a couple leagues where the standing/playoffs are determined in stanger ways that I hate more. So much I doubt I will return.
H2H is likely the least fair system especially if you play in leagues with divisions/conferences. There are always weaker divisions and some team gets free W's which is where VP's are helpful.
I mean I guess I could go look at the league but think I have a pretty solid idea of how those divisions might look and I have no problem with a worse H2H record being in the playoffs if they generally scored better all year.
The DLF HoF league does the same and it works out probably the right way even though good teams miss the playoffs every year. That is because we have 6/16 teams make the playoffs not 8 of 16...and the owners are all good and competitive

[bigchiefbc]

The DLF PL is the first VP league I've played in, and I don't mind it. I do like the partial offsetting of matchup luck. My main home league uses every-week doubleheaders to do a similar thing, where if you have a high scoring week, you may lose one game but probably won't lose both. Either way is better than just straight W/L IMO, but to each their own.

[maxhyde]

I will add in the DLF HoF league we have a 6-7 team in the playoffs...however that team also scored the most points of anyone all year. Also had +130pts scored against them more than the next closest and 200 more than avg so you can see that every team they played had an above avg week

I have no problem with that team being in the playoffs...totally deserved and poor H2H luck was the reason they are sub-500

[Vcize]

Like I said in our discussions and like other said here, the fact than a 8-5 team managed to end with more VP's than a 10-3 team, even though that half the VP are based on W-L, means that's the 8-5 team was way better and was much less lucky with the schedule this season.

The Win Loss record in league where you only play one game a week is a very bad indicator of how the team is performing, and schedule play a big random role.

But on the other hand winning and losing weekly matchups is what make this game fun and that's why we like this system.

All-Play records or Total Points would be way more fair, but those are only a long term competition, if you play that way you will never enter MNF needing one player to outscore another one by X points and watching the game on the edge. It's not fun at all.

VP's are meant to be in-between, on one hand matchup matter, on the other the random volatility is tremendously reduced.

This guy gets it.

[Orenthal Shames]

Out of curiosity, what are the VP settings in your leagues? In DLF PL, we use the following settings:

VP per win – 2
VP per tie – 1
VP per loss – 0
VP per top 1/3 scoring – 2
VP per middle 1/3 scoring – 1
VP per bottom 1/3 scoring – 0

This is what I've used in past leagues. VP aims to reduce the randomness of a weekly H2H schedule and reward consistency. It's not to everyone's liking, but it seems to have done it's job here

[motherlode]

H2H is likely the least fair system especially if you play in leagues with divisions/conferences. There are always weaker divisions and some team gets free W's which is where VP's are helpful.

There is no good reason for there to be divisions in FF.

Im in a 12 team league that uses three 4 team divisions. The team that is tied with the #1 seed for most wins (10-3) and is by far the highest scoring team in the league (by over 200 points) is actually the #4 seed in the playoffs behind a team that is 8-5 and a team that is 6-7. The 6-7 team went 6-0 in its own division, and was 0-7 vs teams outside its division. There is also a 7-6 team that didnt even make the playoffs.

But bottom line is there is no perfect system. You play by the rules that the guy who started the league chose, or you find another league to play in.

[splendorlex]

As a member of that league, I think I've been pretty clear that we may need to rethink the overall way VPs work within divisions. And what is really the harmful factor here (IMO) isn't that we use VPs, but that we are also split into divisions.

Divisional play leads us to use a division weighted schedule, where we play the teams in our division twice every year. Divisions should, therefore, be decided by win-loss record if you ask me. Then we could use VPs to decide the first wildcard and perhaps total points or all play record to decide the 2nd wildcard.

One other wrinkle not mentioned here is that I'm in the division with that 8-5 team. I won the division at 10-3, but only won the division by a single VP. Going into the final week, there was a scenario where I ended at 10-3, he ended at 8-5 but still won the division AND eliminated me from the playoffs. To add even more flavor, I beat that team in both of our head to head matchups. That would have been messed up.

But still, I don't think that's the way to go. I think VPs are an ok system, they just can't decide all the playoff teams. My suggestion is we ditch divisions and conferences entirely and go down to a single 1-16 league. In that context, VPs can decide the top 4 playoff teams, and then use other things like total points or all play records to decide the last 2 playoff teams. I think VPs make sense, but I DON'T think they make sense coupled with a divisional structure.