The map pool and the TDs for the groups have been posted.
2021 Fall Invitational Group Stage
2 main reasons: the first is that it creates a disincentive to intentionally throw games or manipulating the bracket to end up in a different bracket/group. By creating a small, but concrete advantage to being a higher seed, it ensures that players are always incentivized to aim for the highest possible seeding position. This helps to avoid some situations we've seen in past LotS tournaments where players intentionally try to manipulate the groups.
The second is that giving the last pick to the high seed rather than vetoing down to the last map is that it is speeds up the tournament by not having to do a bunch of vetoes before the last game. I expect this saves about 1-2 minutes compared to the alternative, and while this isn't huge it contributes to less downtime on the stream.
I understand the disadvantages to creating a system that is intentionally biased towards the high seeds: it's unfair to the lower seeds and discourages upset results. I'm comfortable doing this because the advantage isn't terribly huge, letting the high seed pick the last map from the remaining 5 maps of the 11 map pool after a tiebreaker map will only affect cases where player skill is already very similar and other sources of variance are likely larger than the map pick.
2 players, treefolknoob and zwaffelnoob, have notified me that they won't be able to play the Group Stage. Subs will be slotted in to replace them and anyone else who can't make it the day of the tournament based on snake seeding order.
espi will win the tournament, no matter what the groups will be
Sorry for my English. I use translator
Congrats to Tagada, Espiranto-, Adjux, Nexus, Turin, Paralon, and ZLO for advancing to the playoffs next week! There were some pretty incredible upsets including Turin winning Group C 3-0 and Adjux taking a series off Nexus 2-0 to win Group B!
Thanks to my co-host farms for casting with me of twitch.tv/faflive. We reached 159 peak viewers and 116 average viewers, a record for a Seasonal Group Stage stream!
Thanks to my great Tournament Directors HintHunter and f1lthycasual, this event wouldn't have been possible without you!
And thank you to all the other players, donators, and viewers who made this tournament possible.
Players advancing to the playoffs please send me your map submission ASAP! I have only received it from Paralon so far, if you sent it via FAF I may not have received it due to the token logout bug, please send it via discord.
There were two issues that cropped up during the tournament that I need to address.
First, Jagged and Blackheart both appear to have forfeited vs each other. As TD I'm going to rule that because of this they tied for 4th place in their group. The prize money that would've gone to 3rd place will be redistributed to higher prizes.
Second, archsimkat and TURBO2 both perfectly tied for 2nd place in Group D. There are two tiebreaker ways to settle this, total win-loss: where archsimkat would advance and seed position: where turbo would advance. Neither method is specified in the tournament rules, so it doesn't seem fair for me to rule by fiat one way or the other. To resolve this, I have asked both of the players to play a BO1 to determine 2nd vs 3rd place in Group D in the next two days, expect updates to follow.