brodywas curious what season has had the overall most competitive invite playoffs lineup, so i did a little stats research spreadsheet (sheet in 2nd tab at the bottom)
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the main factors considered are win differentials both per map and per series, the percentage of rounds won by series-losing teams, how many series went to decider maps, and whether teams made comeback runs in losers bracket
the methodology is definitely faulty but it was the simplest way to reasonably estimate parity. there's definitely lots of other hard-to-measure factors that go into what makes an exciting season (were the games closer than the score indicated? did a low-seeded team do better than expected? did banny lose?)
for reference, it registers seasons 6, 8-11, 16, 19, 24, and 27 of ESEA, and seasons 7, 10, and 11 of RGL as what i would consider high parity, while seasons 30-31 of ESEA, and seasons 1, 4, 8, and 12 of RGL register noticeably lowly
again, i dont think this quite matches up with what most people would consider a good playoffs lineup (notably S8, one of the strongest playoffs lineups in history, registers low on parity), but it does (imo correctly) show the peaks during the earlier ESEA seasons, and the valley around the dawn of RGL
also would like to note that no team has won after losing their opening match since ESEA S6, and that for 10 seasons straight (ESEA S27-RGL S5) no team made a comeback run at all
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F65PUbQWYAA7uSc?format=jpg&name=medium