MLS Schedule

[The Tr0ll]

So, apologies if this has been covered elsewhere and I've missed it, but I searched and didn't find anything.

Issue: The game creates the MLS schedule incorrectly after the 2022 season.

The way that it is supposed to work:

29 teams in the league. Each team plays 34 matches
2 conferences: one with 15 teams, one with 14 teams
Each team plays every team in its conference twice,
The larger conference plays six games out of conference (these matchups rotate year over year, but I'd be fine if they were random)
The smaller conference plays 6 or 7 out of conference games, and 1 or 2 additional in-conference games.

Yes, you're right, that is a mess lol.

The way that it is set up in the database (current and past):

Every team plays every team in their conference once.
Every team plays every team in the other conference once.
Every team plays 6 more games from random opponents in their own conference.

After playing with it in the editor some, it doesn't look like any fix will be easy, and the fact that it is wrong in the vanilla database makes me think that it can't be fixed in the editor, but I thought I would ask anyway:

Does anyone know how I might be able to correct this in the editor? I looked at the custom match plan (the thing that looks like a matrix), but there doesn't appear to be any way to allow for different teams to be chosen from the opposite conference every year. (Also, that thing looks daunting lol).

I know I could add or subtract a team to make the conferences even and the problem would go away, but that's kind of a last resort for me.

Thanks in advance!

Edited July 24, 2023 by The Tr0ll
clarity

[themodelcitizen]

The issue is that you can't set that variability right? I guess you can tell group 0 (the larger group) to play 6 teams in group 1 for one round each, but then setting it so group 1 plays the extra games against other group 1 teams will have to be set to 2 or 3 games, not either/or.

If you added a hidden group stage that generated all the fixtures and sent them back to stage 0, you could set all kinds of variables. This wouldn't be visible in-game (if you check "hidden stage") but you could do it with groups of two, three, or even one team, and set a fixture plan that looks exactly how you want. Could account for some variability/randomness each year too. Just that it would be a LOT of work

[The Tr0ll]

So, yes, sort of, but the issue that the top solution here creates is that it leaves teams in group 1 with an uneven number of games played because the (15*6=)90 fixtures between group 0 and group 1 don't divide evenly by 14. Some group 1 teams will have six games with group zero, but a few (6) will have to play 7 games with group 0.

So in other words, some group 1 teams would need 1 more game to get to 34, and others will need 2. I don't know if I'm writing that in a way that makes sense.

A hidden stage does sound like a lot of work, but it also seems like it might be the best/only way forward. Thanks for your help!

[themodelcitizen]

I mean arguably SI's way is better, lol, each team should get a home game against Messi (if he'd play on turf at least) every 2 years. As it is, you can take years to get a home game against Miami. I appreciate that realism is the goal here, mind you

[The Tr0ll]

14 hours ago, themodelcitizen said:

I mean arguably SI's way is better, lol, each team should get a home game against Messi (if he'd play on turf at least) every 2 years. As it is, you can take years to get a home game against Miami. I appreciate that realism is the goal here, mind you

Oh, you're not wrong, generally speaking. The only reason I don't love it is that MLS Playoff seeding is totally based on ranking within the conference (rather than the whole league), so those conference matches have a lot to say about your cup chances at the end of a season.

[themodelcitizen]

If you end up having to specify the hidden stage fixture plan in an exact way to get it to play how you want, you could have 2 rotating editions of MLS with 2 year rotations, each with a slightly different fixture plan. So, say, Atlanta would get an inter-conference game against LAFC one year, Portland the next. If you can't get it to be semi-random you can at least make it seem like it