T90 Titans League | Announcement

Announcement | Handbook | Maps | Questions & Answers | Registration | Discord | Schedule​

The ‘T90 Titans League’ is a recurring league that aims to provide a consistent high-level stage for pro players to hone their skills, and give newcomers a chance to prove their ability and advance into the upper echelon of players.

For this inaugural season, the winner of the Platinum League will earn an invitation to the Red Bull Wololo Legacy event in October.

There will be a Silver Qualifier for Season 2 later this year after RBW Legacy, and before Christmas. The exact dates & details are yet to be confirmed.

Format

The 48 highest ranked players on the 1v1 ATP Rankings who sign up will be placed into two divisions of 24 players. Within these divisions, players will be seeded into groups of 6, and play a 3 games series against each of their 5 opponents over 5 weeks. At the end of this group stage, the 1st placed player will advance to the quarterfinals, while 2nd & 3rds meet in the Ro12 of the playoffs, while the lowest 2 players will be relegated.

Every player in both divisions will earn prizemoney for every game that they win, as well as bonuses for their placement at the end of the league.

Before the 2nd season begins, there will be a large open single-elimination qualifier to determine which players will replace those who are relegated.

Prize Money

The prize pool of $22,500 has been sponsored by Microsoft.

Platinum League: $17,300​

1st place: $2,100
2nd place: $1,400
3rd & 4th place: $1,000
5th - 8th place: $500
9th - 12th place: $200
13th - 24th place: $150

Plus $40 per game won in the group stage (a maximum of $600 if you win all 15 games)

Gold League: $5,200​

1st place: $200
2nd place: $160
3rd & 4th place: $100
5th - 8th place: $80
9th - 12th place: $60
13th - 24th place: $40

Plus $20 per game won in the group stage (a maximum of $300 if you win all 15 games)

Timeline

Sign-Ups: June 03rd - June 24th
Seeding: June 25th

You can see all the signed-up players on the registration page.

Platinum League​

Spoiler

Group Stage: June 27th - July 28th
Round 1: June 27th - July 01st
Round 2: July 04th - July 08th
Round 3: July 11th - July 15th
Round 4: July 18th - July 21st
Round 5: July 25th - July 28th

Playoffs: August 05th - August 07th
Ro12: Friday 05th August
Quarterfinals: Saturday 06th August
Semifinals & Final: Sunday 07th August

Gold League​

Spoiler

Group Stage: June 27th - August 05th
Round 1: June 27th - July 01st
Round 2: July 04th - July 08th
Round 3: July 11th - July 15th
Round 4: July 18th - July 21st
Round 5: July 25th - July 28th
Extra Week: August 01st - August 05th

Playoffs: August 12th - August 14th
Ro12: Friday 12th August
Quarterfinals: Saturday 13th August
Semifinals & Final: Sunday 14th August

All group stage matches will be played & broadcast on weekdays (Monday - Friday) to avoid clashing with RMS Cup 2.

Maps

T90 Titans League will feature

• Arabia
• Atacama by Mr ED
• Cross by TheMadCADer
• Fortified Clearing by Chrazini
• Gold Rush
• Golden Swamp
• Houseboat by Yo_Dan
• Jungle Swamp by TheMadCADer
• Ravines
• Serengeti
• Yucatan replaced by Arena

Start practicing today by downloading the map pack here or by searching for “T90 Titans League - Map Pack” in the in-game mod workshop.

The map pack is edited and maintained by Chrazini.

 

That indeed is a bit odd a mappool. Don't get me wrong, I still fully trust this to be a great event, but personally I think it would be better to attempt to better accomodate for real homemaps, to be able to see the players skill in a variety of situations. Instead of catering to mainly Arabia players, which this mappool seems to do to me, tbh.

Discussion of maps in mappool:
- Catering to Arabia-players: There are just a lot of arabia clones; Those being standard Arabia, Yucatan, which is Arabia with more ponds and food. Serengeti, a more open version of Arabia, with slightly different resources, but still an open map, and all too similar. Gold Rush; Arabia with a mountain and gold in the middle, an open map, but one which still plays rather open(I often see it being considered an arabiaclone though, why it's here). In itself I don't think it's this much an issue, it's just remarkable since it's that much a difference to other popular maps, such as Arena, Nomad, or pure water players.
-Both wet Atacama and cross are here. I think one of those would have been able to fill the open-map-with-water-in-corners archetype good enough. Don't get me wrong, I too enjoy atacama more with the ponds. But it in combination with cross just seems a bit odd.
-Golden Swamp and Houseboat: These maps seem like maps where a lot of preparation will pay off. I quite like the idea of that. I may not like certain of these maps, but tastes differ, so I still acknowledge their inclusion as a good thing.
-Fortified clearing: Seems and odd inclusion whilst other, better known maps such as Arena or Fortress are not included. Not that it's really that similar to those anyways, despite other claims in the thread. In my opinion, it's closer to hideout, which will need to do as a defensive map in this mappool.
-Ravines and Jungle Swamp: I'm not convinced. I have no reason to believe it's a bad map though. Both just feels like filler to me. Though when searching after it, the first thing I find is T90 saying Ravines is one of his favourite maps, so it's probably less filler than it comes across.

Maps which I think to be missing:
-Obviously Arena and Nomad. Both of these are popular, and despite the often used critisism of "nobody plays 1v1 Nomad", I find myself enjoying and playing the map, so I believe these criticisms to be incorrect. Especially Arena however, has a large portion of people which very much specialise in this map, who could perform way better would their playstyle be as well represented as Arabia-clones.
-Islands, or another pure water map seems to be missing as well. Whilst less popular than the other important map types, I still would have liked to see their inclusion.
-At first I would ask after the lack of extremely open land maps, but on second thought, I do believe Serengeti should be able to fill this niche.

I know it might be rude to reference to another tournament, by another organiser, but I really loved the mappool of The Open Classic. I think it would have made a great basis for a mappool for a league-style tournament such as this one. If I could come up with any commentary for said mappool, it would be a distinct lack of hybrid maps, which this mappool definitely has. As well as lacking a bit of the maps which need a lot of preparation, which the planned mappool for this league does have. I do think that with enough willpower, you can come up with amazing strategies for plenty of the more commonly played maps though, considering the crazy plays certain players often come up with.

It's not a horrible mappool by any means, but I just think it's a shame that some of the major archetypes; General open land map(e.g. Arabia), Closed land map(e.g. Arena), hyper open land map (e.g. Land Madness, dry atacama or arguably serengeti), Hybrid map (e.g. Mediterranean, or arguably Nomad), land map with back ponds (e.g. wet atacama, cross, I do count houseboat in the same category), Nomad (e.g. Nomad). I think it's a shame only half of these are unrepresented. And I don't think I defined too many archetypes.

Silver league issues:

I do understand it is hard to balance a silver bracket with pricepools, and since it's the goal that the top players, who are used to playing for price pools have to play in them if they dropped out for a season, I understand why you did it this way. I would be nice to see a visible cup or wandering squires league equivalent for those who didn't make it into the main event.

In the end, it is your tournament, and I'm sure it's going to be good. This kind of league definitely is something which was missing in the aoe2-scene. And I'm glad it's here. This is meant to be constructive critisism, for I too wish the best for this type of tournament.

Nor was it meant to be this long a text. My excuses for the wall of text.

 

@Vossn are you sure that is 2 player map size? Looks a bit large and think that might have caused the issue

Edit: I will come back and respond to general stuff in the thread later

 

@Vossn are you sure that is 2 player map size? Looks a bit large and think that might have caused the issue

I hadn't checked, I don't know why my mapsize would be larger, but I'll quickly check.

You're correct, map size was Normal for some reason, I have no idea when I changed that one, good spot, I hadn't noticed yet. I will remove the sreenshot and tho comment from the original message.

Using the correct size does make the map better fit in the mappool. Easier to wall, so it's quite defensible. I'd guess around the levels of hideout of defensibility, but of course we will see how it turns out.

 

amazing idea, i would love to see this format, with a 3-3 or 4-4 league.
with this BoA, we can see that are 10 teams that can compite in more or less same conditions. the top 8 seeded plus vinchester team and capoch + chris + dragonstar + andy team.

 

I guess some are not considering that the lack of silver league (gold qualifier actually) leaves many great players out of the league because they lack tournament elo, some examples:
Heartt, chris, rise, laaan, badkoala, feage, jibatong, kamigawa, dobbs, chart, komtan, rubenstock, zuppi, cyclops, riut, lyx, hallis, noisick, fedex and so on...
But well, still excited for this season1 and i hope for a huge boom for s2

 

I guess some are not considering that the lack of silver league (gold qualifier actually) leaves many great players out of the league because they lack tournament elo, some examples:
Heartt, chris, rise, laaan, badkoala, feage, jibatong, kamigawa, dobbs, chart, komtan, rubenstock, zuppi, cyclops, riut, lyx, hallis, noisick, fedex and so on...
But well, still excited for this season1 and i hope for a huge boom for s2

First of all a small correction: They are not missing tournament elo, they are missing AoE2 Tournament Points (ATP). Most of them are also in the list and some would be likely to make it in cause not everyone will sign up (Noisick #51, hallis #56, Rise #58...)

Second of all, most players who are really not on the list are missing because they haven't played a 1v1 event in ages. dobbs, Hearttt and Chris are inactive for over a year in high-level 1v1 tournaments. Bad Koala, FeAge, jibatong and Kamigawa haven't played a 1v1 event since October. In my opinion you cannot expect to be eligible for S-tier events without even playing tournaments in first place (which the affected players may not even want to btw).

Third of all, multiple of the players would not really be considered top 50 1v1 players by most, e.g. dobbs, komtan, Kamigawa.

(That being said I also think that it would be cool to have an actual Silver League with or without prize money running in parallel to the other leagues)

 

I'm flattered to be even mentioned in this topic

 

The gold league and the atp rankings have one big flaw, what is f1re doing in the gold league a player that has a longer career in aoe2 and can eat as breakfast many guys in the platinum league, other than him, the gold league seems to be fair, using such system is like putting daut in the gold league cause he hasn't bothered climbing the ladder, just like f1re hasn't been very active recently, but we are talking of someone that if i am not mistaken has been in top 1 on the ladder before.

 

I think the ATP ranking has a lot of potential but right now its so inaccurate regarding so many players. Fire 29 of the world? sitaux 31???? daniel 32??? vivi 35?? MBL 20?

It shouldn't be the only system to seed players. Not only you risk making them face way stronger opponents than they should in early rounds but, especially in this case, you just send them down to the gold league and affect the prize they can achieve. I don't know why this tournament is completely ignoring the tournament elo OR highest/current elo in ranked games. Ideally seedings should be done mixing at least 2 out of 3 methods and not just sticking to 1 of them.

 

I think the ATP ranking has a lot of potential but right now its so inaccurate regarding so many players. Fire 29 of the world? sitaux 31???? daniel 32??? vivi 35?? MBL 20?

It shouldn't be the only system to seed players. Not only you risk making them face way stronger opponents than they should in early rounds but, especially in this case, you just send them down to the gold league and affect the prize they can achieve. I don't know why this tournament is completely ignoring the tournament elo OR highest/current elo in ranked games. Ideally seedings should be done mixing at least 2 out of 3 methods and not just sticking to 1 of them.

Well you have to respect the tournament organiser's decision, right?

ATP ranking rewards activity in many tournaments (e.g. Dragonstar, Vinchester, ACCM participated in a high number of tournaments, performed well there and get rewarded)

Inacttiviy on the other hand is punished in ATP ranking (e.g. Hera, Lierrey, Sitaux participated in less than 10 of these tournaments and get punished by being ranked maybe lower than some people might see them).

In the long run this system encourages players to play in more tournaments which is great for the competitive scene

 

Ideally seedings should be done mixing at least 2 out of 3 methods and not just sticking to 1 of them.

In that thread where seeding methods were discussed some time ago, it was also shown that using just 100% tournament elo is the most accurate method for predicting results, even better than using the mix of tournament elo, ATP and ladder elo we made for Holy Cup, and better than ATP as well.

(And obviously every method is miles better than using just ladder elo anyway, at least for the very top end of the players)

(My main point being that mixing methods doesn't necessarily leads to more accurate seeding)

 

ATP ranking rewards activity in many tournaments (e.g. Dragonstar, Vinchester, ACCM participated in a high number of tournaments, performed well there and get rewarded)

Inacttiviy on the other hand is punished in ATP ranking (e.g. Hera, Lierrey, Sitaux participated in less than 10 of these tournaments and get punished by being ranked maybe lower than some people might see them).

That is not necessarily true, for example babaorum is ranked relatively high while not participating in many tournaments lately

 

This ATP ranking could be great to seed people into an end of year world championship type tournament but aoe2 does not have that. For this league it'd make way more sense to just run a qualifier.

 

I think the ATP ranking has a lot of potential but right now its so inaccurate regarding so many players. Fire 29 of the world? sitaux 31???? daniel 32??? vivi 35?? MBL 20?

It shouldn't be the only system to seed players. Not only you risk making them face way stronger opponents than they should in early rounds but, especially in this case, you just send them down to the gold league and affect the prize they can achieve. I don't know why this tournament is completely ignoring the tournament elo OR highest/current elo in ranked games. Ideally seedings should be done mixing at least 2 out of 3 methods and not just sticking to 1 of them.

The players you mentioned have participated in far fewer tournaments than those above them which is likely why they're listed there on ATP. The idea of ATP is to benefit those who are active within the scene & getting great results & this league is all about that as well going forward. I want to inject more money into the scene & benefit those grinding out there, ATP does that. Ranking players off S tier only brings it's own problems, and trying a "hybrid" ranking system isn't something I'm interested in doing at all for this.


Why? Because after Season 1 8 players will be relegated out of each league, and 8 promoted to fill their spots. If a player deserves platinum or gold in your eyes, they've got an opportunity to earn it and be where they belong. Remember that the seasons will reoccur every six months (ish) so it's not like opportunities are being denied long term. In theory after a few seasons things the balance of power amongst pros will be very clear as they've all had to play for it, instead of other events and opinions affecting their seed. We have to start it somehow, it will balance just fine as we move forward over the next few years.

 

Well you have to respect the tournament organiser's decision, right?

ATP ranking rewards activity in many tournaments (e.g. Dragonstar, Vinchester, ACCM participated in a high number of tournaments, performed well there and get rewarded)

Inacttiviy on the other hand is punished in ATP ranking (e.g. Hera, Lierrey, Sitaux participated in less than 10 of these tournaments and get punished by being ranked maybe lower than some people might see them).

In the long run this system encourages players to play in more tournaments which is great for the competitive scene

But in the other side, we could argue that sitaux did more S-Tier tourney than bruh for example with better results. S-tier tourney is not the same time amount of involvement than an A-tier tourney.

Also, I think it's also important to not push (semi) pro players to play every tourney they can see. It let space for "smaller" player to grow and earn money. Imagine Viper playing all those tourney, do you think it would be fun for everyone ?

 

The players you mentioned have participated in far fewer tournaments than those above them which is likely why they're listed there on ATP. The idea of ATP is to benefit those who are active within the scene & getting great results & this league is all about that as well going forward. I want to inject more money into the scene & benefit those grinding out there, ATP does that. Ranking players off S tier only brings it's own problems, and trying a "hybrid" ranking system isn't something I'm interested in doing at all for this.

Why? Because after Season 1 8 players will be relegated out of each league, and 8 promoted to fill their spots. If a player deserves platinum or gold in your eyes, they've got an opportunity to earn it and be where they belong. Remember that the seasons will reoccur every six months (ish) so it's not like opportunities are being denied long term. In theory after a few seasons things the balance of power amongst pros will be very clear as they've all had to play for it, instead of other events and opinions affecting their seed. We have to start it somehow, it will balance just fine as we move forward over the next few years.

Problem here is the term of "active player". As I mentioned above, S-tier tourney does not requiert the same involvement as an A-tier tourney. Players who have an opportunity to make it to the main stage of a S-tier tourney will mostly not sign-up an A or B tier tourney that is overlapping with their current tourney. And that's can't be more true that those players (like Sitaux) need more weeks of training than a snake if they want to perform. Not mentioning schedule conflict.

In that case, could we consider that those players are less active?
Looks sitaux liquipedia results page, he is almost playing something every weeks, how can we not consider him as an active player.

It leads to an unfair system where "semi-pros" are left behind for the benefice of pros and "smaller" player than semi-pros that don't perform on S-tier but can spam the A and B tier.
I would even add that this system promote an unhealthy activity which could potentially lead to a burn out instead of rewarding real performances. Some players doesn't need to play 30 tourneys a year to be good, don't force them to do. Rest is important.

You also said that things will be balanced by themselves in 6 months, why not doing it now?

Prizepool aside, we are talking about a potential invitation for the redbull wololo event, balance have to be done now, not in 6 months.

Edit : Dragonstar also finished 1st of the World Rumble A tier tourney with a realy attractive prizepool, hosted by OGN. The requirement to participate was to not be qualified in the KOTD4 main event, so.. Sitaux couldn't participated even if he wanted to.

 

Edit : Dragonstar also finished 1st of the World Rumble A tier tourney with a realy attractive prizepool, hosted by OGN. The requirement to participate was to not be qualified in the KOTD4 main event, so.. Sitaux couldn't participate even if he wanted to.

sitaux lost in quarterfinals to fire actually

 

sitaux lost in quarterfinals to fire actually

Oh nvm ! I forgot 11
But my point is still valid
"Open for players with an 1v1 RM rating higher than 2200 and who were not invited to King of the Desert 4"
By excluding players, this kind of tourney provides another argument that the ATP seeding is not fair (if they are counted on it) .

 

Oh nvm ! I forgot 11
But my point is still valid
"Open for players with an 1v1 RM rating higher than 2200 and who were not invited to King of the Desert 4"
By excluding players, this kind of tourney provides another argument that the ATP seeding is not fair (if they are counted on it) .

I'll invite you to check the ATP sheet for clarification, under "Details".

There, you will see all the factors that go into counting how many ATP points a tournament will award, based on prize pool (by far the main driving factor), the size of the draw, the settings and whether the tournament had restrictions.

Restrictions on who can sign up penalize a tournament in terms of total points awarded.
This was the case for the World Rumble, which prevented players who had been invited to KotD 4 from entrering. You can see then the final breakdown in "Tourney Info".

For the World Rumble, it is as follow:

0.5 is the multiplier for the tourney. Essentially, giving it its weight. The winner of a tourney would win 1,000 points, if the multiplier is 1. This means that by winning the World Rumble, Dragonstar scored 500 points. Slightly above the 380 points Sitaux scored for making KotD 4 quarterfinals.

In KotD 4, Sitaux scored wins against Capoch, ACCM and MbL.
In World Rumble, Dragonstar won against Badboy, F1Re (twice), Margougou and miguel (among others). He was unbeaten in 8 sets total.

On paper the two performances are very similar, with perhaps a slight edge to Sitaux with the quality of the opponents he faced, but on the other hand, the World Rumble took place on more maps than just Arabia. The ATP ranking should score them fairly similarly, which it does.

This ranking is by no means perfect, but careful thinking has gone into determining how different tier of tourneys should award points and come up with a reasonably objective system capable of scaling.

 

Oh nvm ! I forgot 11
But my point is still valid
"Open for players with an 1v1 RM rating higher than 2200 and who were not invited to King of the Desert 4"
By excluding players, this kind of tourney provides another argument that the ATP seeding is not fair (if they are counted on it) .

Your example was false as Sitaux played in World Rumble and your argument is incorrect because the ATP system accounts for this & other variables. I encourage you to read about ATP & all it takes into account, it’s not perfect but I chose it for a reason.

 

Oh nvm ! I forgot 11
But my point is still valid
"Open for players with an 1v1 RM rating higher than 2200 and who were not invited to King of the Desert 4"
By excluding players, this kind of tourney provides another argument that the ATP seeding is not fair (if they are counted on it) .

your point has 0 sense.

 

I read most of the topic and many things have been said already and I want to give my pov as a player : I have to agree with people saying "smaller tournaments" have too much importance compare to S tier tournaments, I agree I only have 7 tournaments counting for the ATP ranking since I couldnt participate in any tournament last summer which was a year ago but I don't think I can be more active than I am right now. I'm participating in almost all tournaments and playing many showmatches so I really feel like it would be a huge downgrade for me to not be in a top 24 tournament while i honestly think I deserve to be there 100% considering my recent performances and time investment in tournaments. Having this "wrong" ranking system and delaying the change will keep affecting tournaments ranking for too long, there were some wierd matches in resurgence qualifiers because of that and some players are getting pusnished. A player with bad atp ranking will get tougher matches and will always struggle so much to improve it which means not participating in some tournaments a long time ago will always affect his actual tournament experience and that's how I'm feeling every time i play a tournament based on this ranking system. Long time top players are in the top atp ranking and will always be there since it'a a long term ranking and having easy matches will always give them the possibility to get more points by going far in the tournament but as a "new improved player" who is NOW investing a lot of time in aoe I really feel like it's just too hard and takes too long to improve my atp ranking. I also agree there is no perfect ranking system but mixing some like nicov said would probably lead to a decent ranking. Having a wrong tournament seeding isn't good for players who deserve a better seed but also for the ones being overrated and will get destroyed, it's also not good for the casters, the viewers and the players who will have to face underrated players

 

Why? Because after Season 1 8 players will be relegated out of each league, and 8 promoted to fill their spots. If a player deserves platinum or gold in your eyes, they've got an opportunity to earn it and be where they belong. Remember that the seasons will reoccur every six months (ish) so it's not like opportunities are being denied long term. In theory after a few seasons things the balance of power amongst pros will be very clear as they've all had to play for it, instead of other events and opinions affecting their seed. We have to start it somehow, it will balance just fine as we move forward over the next few years.

I mentioned it earlier in this post, and still haven't seen much discussion or rationale for how it's a good thing for 1/3 of platinum league to be replaced each season with new players who have not had to beat a single platinum league player. Would you be able to share some of the thought process there? I just don't buy this concept of 'earn it and be where they belong' if the #17th ranked player who faced only top tier competition gets replaced by the #25th ranked player who faced only mid tier competition without any form of last chance qualifier/relegation playoffs etc. I just disagree I guess that with this setup the 'balance of power' will be clear after a few seasons. Automatically inviting someone who lost in the quarterfinals of Gold League straight to platinum league without having to even face off against any of the platinum league players is a recipe for some very un-balanced and un-earned spots as we go. In my humble opinion of course. And even if this system does become 100% perfect after a few seasons, than we just have a revolving door of the true #17-24 and #25-32 ranked players with no way for them to face each other.

 

I read most of the topic and many things have been said already and I want to give my pov as a player : I have to agree with people saying "smaller tournaments" have too much importance compare to S tier tournaments, I agree I only have 7 tournaments counting for the ATP ranking since I couldnt participate in any tournament last summer which was a year ago but I don't think I can be more active than I am right now. I'm participating in almost all tournaments and playing many showmatches so I really feel like it would be a huge downgrade for me to not be in a top 24 tournament while i honestly think I deserve to be there 100% considering my recent performances and time investment in tournaments. Having this "wrong" ranking system and delaying the change will keep affecting tournaments ranking for too long, there were some wierd matches in resurgence qualifiers because of that and some players are getting pusnished. A player with bad atp ranking will get tougher matches and will always struggle so much to improve it which means not participating in some tournaments a long time ago will always affect his actual tournament experience and that's how I'm feeling every time i play a tournament based on this ranking system. Long time top players are in the top atp ranking and will always be there since it'a a long term ranking and having easy matches will always give them the possibility to get more points by going far in the tournament but as a "new improved player" who is NOW investing a lot of time in aoe I really feel like it's just too hard and takes too long to improve my atp ranking. I also agree there is no perfect ranking system but mixing some like nicov said would probably lead to a decent ranking. Having a wrong tournament seeding isn't good for players who deserve a better seed but also for the ones being overrated and will get destroyed, it's also not good for the casters, the viewers and the players who will have to face underrated players

I totally agree, the perfect calcul to seed player don’t exist, so it makes no sense to take only one of them to seed the entire tournament, the best imo would be to mix atp ranking which represent long term performance and another one like aoe elo which is more based on the current shape of each player because each match give you points or take them back, aoe elo is not perfect to seed player, like atp ranking, and ladder seems even worse, let’s try to find a decent way to seed player, a mix imo could be the best way to avoid as much as possible weird seeding like for you in this case or for the resurgence qualification.

 

Remember that the seasons will reoccur every six months (ish) so it's not like opportunities are being denied long term.

Unless you know something I (we) don't, there is an opportunity which is being denied.

For this inaugural season, the winner of the Platinum League will earn an invitation to the Red Bull Wololo Legacy event in October.

If you get into Platinum leage in six months (ish), I doubt you will be able to fight for a sport in a Red Bull (LAN) Event, which is quite a big opportunity lost.

Yes, long term the league system might reflect the correct rankings, but if you make the first one way more important, proper seeding is more important too.

Having open qualifier spots into the league could work (for first season, or for every season, arguments are there for both in our non-professional scene), but of course there is no time for that, so the players can't do anything more than complain.