Seasonal / Regular Tournaments
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Thank you guys so much for your interest in EU vs USA (+ the Americas)! It means a lot to know people are interested in a project that I intend to bring to life. Although, I do have a question for everyone,
Why are tournaments much more rare these days? I've heard so much about the good old days of FAF when tournaments were regular and fun, what exactly changed? Can this be brought back?
When I talk to people of all ratings about this issue, the common answer is always that there's no fun tournaments to sign up to and play in, although there's seasonal invitationals, Rainbow Cup, the occasional SainseRow tournament etc etc. I wish to help bring some sort of semi regular tournaments to all ratings, but mostly catering to the 1500+ scene. Would this be of interest to you guys?
It wouldn't be just me hosting tournaments either, if I can get enough interest, feedback etc I know a few people who have genuinely fun tournament ideas that they'd love to host, maybe this could be the first step to preserving some sort of competitiveness in FAF? who knows really.
Feel free to let me know, maybe a monthly or bimonthly tournament to start us off?
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My two cents (Mostly my personal opinion and not a summary of what others told me):
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Tourneys are often not fun because of the players in them.
Not everyone likes each other - what a shocker, right? If I see a 1v1 tourney with ppl I dislike playing against me, my motivation drops. Why? Bc if I lose, there will be shittalk or references 24/7 (see Mr. Riot who linked a random PoR game we had against each other everytime he had the chance to), so this one is rather about the risk-reward situation and prestige/image (and I know other high ranks feel this as well bc I've talked to them about this). Or see teamgame tourneys, if you land in a team of ppl which you simply dislike causing a drop in motivation (e.g. last Rainbow Cup where Rowan wanted to pick me). -
The prices compared to the effort
LotS gets the biggest part of FAF's prize pool. I think I do remember the number for this year, but as it wasn't public information I'll just say: Please correct me if I'm wrong.
The tourneys I've played in started at around 3pm for me and finished at around 1 or 2 am. It's insanely exhausting to play, time consuming and if the prize is 25$ for the 1st team in a 2v2 together with the "Tournament winner" avatar, personally I don't see a reason why I should spend 10 hrs of nonstop FAF. It's mostly about prestige / image for me there.
For LotS the main issue (which was already talked about) is that the best players only become active shortly before the tourney and inactive afterwards again, meaning you either have to beg for 1v1s or you literally cannot train properly for that limiting the chances to win by a large amount which further kills motivation. -
Weird rules / behaviour from TDs
See moderation talk about this though. just my personal thing that I won't participate in tourneys from TD X anymore bc of reasons. Besides that rating cap is a system I dislike bc you most often can't sign up with friends and the tournaments are usually dominated by underranked people from that time - like Farms' team in the last tourney (even though they forfeited for reasons which don't matter here). No point in me playing if I already know who'll win.
Also the fact there are TDs still not realizing that TMM ranks are highly inflated so every decent high ranks purposely drops to not be overranked in tourneys - I can name at least 4 right now and show their graphs if I wanted to.
These were just random things I could've thought of, if you wanna know more details about ranking cap / which rankings to take / formats / maps, ask me in VC.
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sign up
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@Strydxr said in Seasonal / Regular Tournaments:
Why are tournaments much more rare these days? I've heard so much about the good old days of FAF when tournaments were regular and fun, what exactly changed? Can this be brought back?
Is there anywhere that gives guidance on requirements for someone to host a FAF tournament and what would be considered re FAF funding of the tournament (other than the official FAF tournament rules)? For example I've got an idea for a more unconventional tournament but while I'd be able to commit the time to organising+running it I wouldn't be able to fund it (beyond non-monetary rewards), and I also have no idea on the criteria for FAF funding.
If there is guidance it'd be worth linking to from the FAF Wiki tournament page (as well as linking to the tournament rules) so that if there are other people who like me have contemplated organising a tournament for x then it could give them a starting point and make it more likely the idea progresses.
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A tournament is considered official if FAF is offering prizes for the participants, including
avatars, public funds, and other prizes. -
Its in the rule set
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There’s less tournaments because nobody feels like investing half their weekends into hosting them every month anymore.
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Just to give you some context, FAF has been targeted by quite a few DDoS attacks recently. There was a period when the servers would go down almost daily, which made it tough to host any consistent events—casual games and especially tournaments.
Lately, the attacks have slowed down, though they still pop up unpredictably. For example, our recent MapGen tournament was hit mid-event, which forced us to postpone the games to the next day. Unfortunately, that change led to some teams leaving because they couldn't make the adjusted time. So the DDoS thread still exists , But overall, it’s looking more promising also since there is a lot of acitivity in the TD team now and if the stability holds, it could be the right moment to bring more regular tournaments back.
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Take that Sladow.
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In my early days of FAF it felt like the community was MUCH more tight, from my perspective. There were people rated from 1000-1600 who regularly participated in tournaments like WWPC and were active in conversations in aeolus and the forums. They knew the pros and the pros knew them. They were very happy to chat with and train people who wanted to join the scene (like me). Names like Scoot, Greenio, MayorDamage, and Hascins come to mind. These players would also host their own tournaments. They didn't have to be so grand to be exciting, have a look at this one. https://forums.faforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=10627
Sadly WWPC died not too long after, but the scene was very welcoming and having a group of inviting people at the lower ratings kind of gave me an 'entry ticket' to the overall community. Aeolus was a regular chatroom that joes and pros alike would use so you could hop on FAF and have a chat with them the moment you got on. If you, a newcomer, said hi, you'd likely be greeted back by one of these players. Discord didn't exist back then so the client was the main place for communication, and it was accessible to everyone.
Comparing that to FAF these days, aeolus has turned into a cesspool of doddering oddfolk and degenerates. I don't even look at aeolus anymore. Write in aeolus as a newcomer and you'll likely be ignored. Instead of aeolus, there's personal Discord servers but good luck getting in there as a random. The tournament forums are not appealing to low rated players because there are few tournaments and the 'community feeling' isn't there to motivate you to sign up and show up because you don't know anyone. The main Discord helps remedy this but due to its size the cohesive feeling isn't the same. Compared to the tight community in 2015-2016, this community feels largely dissociated.
In any case, low rated tournaments are rare because the turnup to sign-up rario is low. I think this feeling of a tight community played a very strong role in the motivation of lower rated players signing up for and actuallly playing tournaments. This would in turn fuel people's interest in hosting their own tournaments. Remove the tight community feeling -> reduced tournament interest -> reduced amount of tournaments hosted. This old feeling was kind of revived somewhere in 2019-2020 with Blodir hosting a series of Blitz 1v1 tournaments. They were simple and didn't have a prize beyond an avatar. I think there exists the misconception that every tournament has to be this grand thing with a huge prize pool, which doesn't help. I guess be the change you want to see, let the others know they can bring up their tournament ideas without 10 million dollar prize pools and see where it takes us
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