New Setons Tourney Format Suggestion

[callasoiled]

Amount of Teams Max:

2 Teams: Bo9/Bo11 (If not enough Players.)
3 Teams: Round-Robin Style System Bo3, into Bo5/Bo7. (If not enough Players.) (If 3-way-tie occurs, teams will re-do their games in a Bo1 series, repeats until over.)
4 Teams: Single-Elim Bo5 into Bo7 (Bo1/Bo3 for 3rd Place)

How Teams are Made: Pre-made teams with the highest rating teams having priority.

Setup Rules: Every member of one team has to play every slot atleast once, after rotation concludes they can reset and and repeat (but they can't pick the same slot they selected in the previous game).

Can also change the order in which they played in the first rotation (ex: 1st rotation > mid/rock/air/beach, 2nd rotation (can't play beach twice in a row) > mid/air/beach/rock,)

Faction: Players can pick whatever faction they want (for maximum competitive integrity) or alternatively each team must have all factions (So we don't see repetitive use of units that are heavily dominant), but tech sharing will most likely will be abused.

South/North Pick: Faction picks will be decided by rolling. Highest number wins and gets to lock in a player from their team with a faction on a specific slot. The opposing team then must lock in a player from their team with a faction on the mirrored slot. Then the opposing team will pick the slot to lock in with a subsequent player and faction. This process will continue until all 8 players and factions are locked in for the lobby.

Who plays North/South will also be decided by the roll winner.
(Rules copypasted from tourney "Seton's Summer Slam 2")

Open to suggestions/ideas and criticism.

[Skrat]

As a viewer, it would be interesting for me to watch the battle of the "best of the best"! Even if there are few teams

[FtXCommando]

This proposed format is a showmatch, not a tournament. You might as well as just invite the top 10 sentoners to play a BO9 because anything else is pointless fluff for casters, viewers, and players.

Requiring every slot to be rotated between is going to disqualify competent players that irregularly plan sentons because they carry way too much downside relative to only needing to play 1-2 slots they either learn or are already strong at.

Likewise no rating restriction in effect means a team lower quality than some function of farm/yudi/nory/foley might as well as be barred from the event. I’m not even sure a 2nd team could be created to beat that team unless you went into the crypt to search for nexus and tagada and get them to derust. It’s not really any different than the last 3v3 that was posted where one of the signups was 1/2 the lots semifinalists. What’s the point of signing up against that team except to waste a Saturday for casters to cover a predetermined game, viewers to watch a stomp, and players to play an uncompetitive match?

All in all, there isn’t much point in treating it like a tournament with signups, maybe some insanely qualified dark horse 3rd team of banani tier players could try to compete but that’s basically the only other team that could exist and they could just DM the TD to make the decision of whether a 3 team event would make sense or not.

[callasoiled]

This proposed format is a showmatch, not a tournament. You might as well as just invite the top 10 sentoners to play a BO9 because anything else is pointless fluff for casters, viewers, and players.

Whether it's a showmatch or tournament, as long as it's an organized event and there's some sort of incentive for all highest rated seton players to gather and compete against each other, im satisfied as long as it's not the like the previous slop we recently had, unsure if we can call it "pointless fluff", most people would definitely enjoy watching some peak high level seton gameplay, and if there's something at stake, we would definitely see players performing at their highest level instead of them playing the game suboptimally like it's some random tuesday lobby even if somehow all highest rating players were present.

Requiring every slot to be rotated between is going to disqualify competent players that irregularly plan sentons because they carry way too much downside relative to only needing to play 1-2 slots they either learn or are already strong at.

If they aren't able to play all slots then that already makes them incompetent, being flexible is what makes being worthy being one of the best at setons, this suggestion is primarily made to avoid one-trick players and allow for more diversity in gameplay for players and viewer's entertainment.

Likewise no rating restriction in effect means a team lower quality than some function of farm/yudi/nory/foley might as well as be barred from the event. I’m not even sure a 2nd team could be created to beat that team unless you went into the crypt to search for nexus and tagada and get them to derust. It’s not really any different than the last 3v3 that was posted where one of the signups was 1/2 the lots semifinalists. What’s the point of signing up against that team except to waste a Saturday for casters to cover a predetermined game, viewers to watch a stomp, and players to play an uncompetitive match?

Well, i figured nowadays there'd be enough high-level 2k seton players to form atleast 1 or 2 teams that could be able to challenge this super-star roster you speak of, tourneys games can get quite chaotic and there are many other variables besides mechanical raw skill that determines the game outcome like better teamwork/synergy, cheesy strats, etc.

But if you're correct then perhaps in future seton tourneys the same captain-draft system could be used but with less captains or higher prize-pool for fairier teams.

All i want is players of same caliber being able to play with each other instead of being put and forced to play with people that are way below their skill level and with people that can't even speak in the same language.

[Skrat]

I've been thinking about a big team tournament for 2k+ players for a long time. 4 teams of 4 players with an average rating of 2200+. Fortunately, there are many active top players now. But Seton has a bit of its own rules, not all 2200+ mapgen will play seton well.

Therefore, for Seton I think the ideal format would be a showmatch between the 2 strongest teams. Considering that all the strongest players will never be able to gather in one day, it is not an option to make 4 teams. And with 3 teams, 1 team always will have to wait ending of the game, which is also not very convenient.

I also agree with yudi that top players should be able to play any slot equally well. Therefore, I don't see any big problems with the format.

[FtXCommando]

@callasoiled said:

Whether it's a showmatch or tournament, as long as it's an organized event and there's some sort of incentive for all highest rated seton players to gather and compete against each other, im satisfied as long as it's not the like the previous slop we recently had, unsure if we can call it "pointless fluff", most people would definitely enjoy watching some peak high level seton gameplay, and if there's something at stake, we would definitely see players performing at their highest level instead of them playing the game suboptimally like it's some random tuesday lobby even if somehow all highest rating players were present.

The captain draft of this last tourney is working to make as minimal pointless slop games as possible. The point is to create as many equitable teams with a fair shot at winning as possible, and the best way we really have to work through that is going to be trueskill. Personally I would have cut the tournament down to 6 teams based off the rapid dropoff in player skill level in the last round of picks but regardless the average quality of what we got was essential to minimize the level of pointless games while maintaining 8 teams.

For a FAF tournament there are anywhere from 5-8 games in a tournament day before you enter into game fatigue, so making even one game pointless by trueskill metrics means 12%-20% of your event experience is already wasted time by my personal definition. I do not enjoy lopsided games so my goal is mitigating them as much as possible in a tournament.

Requiring every slot to be rotated between is going to disqualify competent players that irregularly plan sentons because they carry way too much downside relative to only needing to play 1-2 slots they either learn or are already strong at.

If they aren't able to play all slots then that already makes them incompetent, being flexible is what makes being worthy being one of the best at setons, this suggestion is primarily made to avoid one-trick players and allow for more diversity in gameplay for players and viewer's entertainment.

Well, i figured nowadays there'd be enough high-level 2k seton players to form atleast 1 or 2 teams that could be able to challenge this super-star roster you speak of, tourneys games can get quite chaotic and there are many other variables besides mechanical raw skill that determines the game outcome like better teamwork/synergy, cheesy strats, etc.

Okay, but you have now halved your potential player pool. In a tournament that you are specifically structuring to already be intentionally difficult to be competitive because of the lack of a rating cap. Nobody is going to be able to meet the quality of you and your thousands of high level sentons games when they might have done like 2 dozen at a high level lately.

Determining if a cheesy strat can work requires fundamentals about the map, you can’t determine valid cheese without knowing timings to beat. And it isn’t even like the team I posted would have terrible communication, you guys play together all the time.

But if you're correct then perhaps in future seton tourneys the same captain-draft system could be used but with less captains or higher prize-pool for fairier teams.

All i want is players of same caliber being able to play with each other instead of being put and forced to play with people that are way below their skill level and with people that can't even speak in the same language.

Yeah, I agree. In effect a TD has full control of what kind of event he will be able to create once the player signups are locked in. He can have a 2200+ event with 2 teams, a 1800+ event with 4 teams, a 1500+ event with 8 teams. Whatever is deemed to be best for the event. Of course some people will complain about it because they wanted to play (every time I try to host a lower bracket for the rest of players I get a huge attrition rate unfortunately) but part of being a TD is picking a vision and sticking to doing the decisions that make it optimal.

[Nuggets]

I find it quite disrespectful to call sub 2k tourney or mixed tourneys "slop" and then saying people only want to see 2k+ gameplay. Sure, for the viewer high level gameplay might be the most interesting, but thats not all there is to be shown.
Same thing as calling the setons summer slam "slop". Should have read the tourney and looked at past tourneys. It was meant like this. If you want to play higher level setons tourney, wait for the king of setons.

[Radiance]

Fully in agreeance with Nuggets on this take. Why must we ostracize lower rated players and call it slop if we have someone under 2K? Some of us (including myself) like playing along side high rated and although there is a gap in skill, you can find different ways to win as shown with Nuggets team.

Mentioning gap in skill, that is why I created brackets in the past to separate the skill gaps and have the high rated play with other high rated while the lower rated can still compete with other lower rated at the same time. Including the community was always the purpose in such tournaments like these, but the challenge has always been balancing.

[callasoiled]

@Nuggets said:

I find it quite disrespectful to call sub 2k tourney or mixed tourneys "slop" and then saying people only want to see 2k+ gameplay. Sure, for the viewer high level gameplay might be the most interesting, but thats not all there is to be shown.
Same thing as calling the setons summer slam "slop". Should have read the tourney and looked at past tourneys. It was meant like this. If you want to play higher level setons tourney, wait for the king of setons.

@Radiance said:

Fully in agreeance with Nuggets on this take. Why must we ostracize lower rated players and call it slop if we have someone under 2K? Some of us (including myself) like playing along side high rated and although there is a gap in skill, you can find different ways to win as shown with Nuggets team.

Mentioning gap in skill, that is why I created brackets in the past to separate the skill gaps and have the high rated play with other high rated while the lower rated can still compete with other lower rated at the same time. Including the community was always the purpose in such tournaments like these, but the challenge has always been balancing.

Well firstly i apologize, slop wasn't the correct word, i just used it because that seems to be a popular slang nowadays, if you guys took it personal it's my bad.

I never said anything about "ostracizing" lower-rated players in the aforementioned post, you can clearly infer from what's written that my wish is for a seton tourney where the literal best of the best compete against eachother, by having pre-made teams you can atleast guarantee that you're able to play with people you're comfortable with and synergize with,

There are several flaws regarding the usage of captain-draft system, including changing set of rules at the last day based on amount of sign-ups, leading to needless drama, people dropping off tourney at last moment and captains being now forced to pick way lower rated players relative to the previous picks by other captains (literally happened this tourney with haid and critren both 1800s that were viable options for both me and nory) (pre-made fixes this by having sub players), instead ending up with a 1500 and a 1400, and language barrier issues which is a severe problem due to the large amount of people that can't speak the same dialect, all of these factors make for a very uncomfortable gameplay experience, and most importantly the system being biased towards specific captains based on rating-drop off between the picks, leading to a tourney being influenced by RNG bs, which clearly goes against the nature of competitive standards.

" you can find different ways to win as shown with Nuggets team."

Not to undermine his accomplishments, his team performed extremely well, but it's undeniable that he got lucky with his picks plus getting a win off a game where Yachiyo (arguably best player in the roster) just straight up loses connection early in the game, also your comment implies that Nuggets's team was somehow a bad combination of roster.

"When saying people only want to see 2k+ gameplay. Sure, for the viewer high level gameplay might be the most interesting, but thats not all there is to be shown."

I don't recall saying on behalf of the community that only top-level games are worthy being considered watched unless i misstyped or you misunderstood something, i just argued about ftx's comment stating that a showmatch between top dogs isn't worth being organized and that we should just host it randomly, first of all we would be playing random slots performing at a casual level, which is why it's essentially mandatory that there's some sort of incentive for high level players to compete against eachother at their strongest (like some giga huge prizepool).

Personally it was just frankly disappointing that clearly the highest rating captains got the short end of the stick and were already pre-determined to lose almost guaranteed, even if grimplex was an actual 2650 sentoner i'd be willing to wager that he'd get eliminated as quickly as he did.

In the past, my last 3-4 captain-draft seton tourneys were all an utterly miserable experience on my part, maybe im being a crybaby, but every single one of them were impacted by reasons i mentioned previously.

But like Nuggets and Ftx said, with the lack of high-level rated players capable of assembling a team that can defeat the current best seton players , i'll wait for the King of Setons Tourney as there might be more higher-rated players motivated to sign up, as last years king of tourney it looks like the teams were much more evenly matched as opposed to this one.

[VindexNoob]

I think this seton tourney wasnt supposed to be high level anyways, its something mediocre, unlike the king one. Although the last king one was also not full 2k+ tbf.

Players just dont want to sign up and spend 10 hours a day playing the tourney. I don't want to do that and I don't have time for that. If it's split across 2-3 weekends, it's a lot better, honestly, but once again doesn't work well with the majority. Bo9 and bo7s is probably just too much tbf, unless you have multiple days for the tourney. I remember playing bo21 vs banani and we did it 3 or so days, and it's not even a tourney. Just exhausting.

Most top players have pretty much stopped playing tourneys because of how much time you need to put into it in one single weekend. A lot of the talk here is based on the assumption that they will actually sign up, which I don't see happening at all. Every year a seton tourney is a few top players with 2ks, sometimes also mixed with 1500s. The 2024 (iirc) one was probably the best seton tourney playerwise, cause every team was full 2k roster. And that one was played during ddos era, but we also had a semi-competent TD, which of course influenced things a bit. But I think it was still the best tourney

But then again MOST people do NOT want to be captains and that's another reason they don't sign up. So this is yet another issue why many good players aren't playing. There's enough obese players that are 2400-2500 rated and don't sign up just because of captaincy

And according to the twitchtracker stats, on average 1v1 tourneys are watched more than teamgame ones, and lower rated tourneys have fewer viewers on average ofc

last seton tourney on farms stream

here is spring invitational 2026

rainbow cup

challengers cup (low rated tourney) + average joes 2v2 (low rated)

lots finals

[Sheppy]

I don't play setons and I loved watching the stream and the format. Have never been this close ever touching this map again after the tourney.