Legend of The Stars 2021 Championship Tournament

@ftxcommando said in LegendoftheStars 2021 Championship Tournament:

Wait hold on, I thought the point was for the snake draft to involve each respective person picking the next person in their group?

Also why round robin when it is guaranteed to result in at least some dead games across 4 groups rather than double elim format with no worthless games?

Ah, yeah it's not really a round robin in the Group stage.

For the snake draft, just an automated one based on seeding rather choosing. Call it an "autodraft" or whatever.

LotS points are softly correlated with skill, it is a measure of both skill and activity with arbitrary weights attached to it. The point of letting people manually draft is that ultimately player skill is going to be determined by how their peers decide to stand them up against the rest.

I don't agree with round robin being useless for group stage especially when using a snake draft as it may lead to groups with all 4 players being able to compete for top 2 spots (look group D). I think that in case of the LoTS it makes sense to have it, as for other tourneys - usually no.

Yeah, also look at Group A.

I mean why did automated group selection get done in the first place? And if it was done, why would you use LotS points for it? I mean I don't want to get into naming names but I DO NOT think that LotS points are an accurate placement of dudes based on their competency, especially with how inherently random the participation of people are across the year. Blackheart puts 1 week of prep and gets 2nd in two different LotS tournaments. Blackheart will put 1 week of prep into this LotS. Does that mean his seed is justified? Does anyone think that? Is he just barely above Tex in skill because Tex became extremely active across the tournament scene since the mid year and got his points there? Bad group seeding will be felt through the rest of the tournament and create generally bad situations. LotS points have a large margin of error in weighing activity vs skill because it doesn't really matter so long as you get some satisfactory 12 invites. Now you have made it that you ABSOLUTELY have nearly no margin of error and need them to showcase skill.

I wouldn't go with round robin because it just literally has no benefits here over standard GSL double elim format. Nobody cares if you're 3rd or 4th best in group stages. It also introduces the need for tiebreaker parameters unless you're totally fine with extending the tourney even MORE for tiebreak games since round robin is also going to add several games on top of double elim.

Like to reiterate that one of the biggest lessons of last year was that round robin should absolutely not be used.

Also just realized Yudi won the qualifier only to get put into the biggest group of death I've ever seen. Well 2nd biggest, group C is the biggest. If you released group formation before the qualifier, I genuinely think people would have intentionally forfeited, and releasing it post-hoc isn't a solution to that problem but rather recognizing things will be gimped so you might as well as not let players know it's gimped until it is.

Even in case of a close group I dont think round robin is a better choice, since 1 random loss in any series can decide between 2nd and 3rd place (e.g. by getting one unlucky map over the whole course of the groupstage), while 2 elim just requires you to win the serieses over all (in which case you only have to win your map and the (left over) neutral map).

Forumpros doing balance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wTcguJZh3A .
When a canis player remembers to build more than 3 units https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hjp8xJHuyA .

When people were saying "snake draft" in past discussions I was under the impression that it means A picks B picks C picks D going through like a snake since it seemed the discussion was between captain picks their whole group vs sequential picks. I thought everyone was in agreement that an automated process was going to have flaws and had the discussion on a new system built on that premise.

The groups look pretty balanced to me.

I mean this is basically what I do for my tournaments. If you do GSL groups, what typically ends up happening is the elimination of the 1st seed vs 4th seed matchup. I like having that matchup there because I've been experimenting with giving prize money to 3rd place in groups. I also think it can be a good opportunity for the 4th seed to get solid tournament experience. It doesn't really cost the tournament any time and if the worse seed doesn't want to play it, they can just forfeit. GSL format has bigger advantages when all the games are being casted and eliminating that 1vs4 is good for the viewer experience.

My system also does this sort of snake seeding instead of snake draft. This is done mostly for time and organizational complexity, but it also acts as an activity incentive/reward for tournament performance. The only cost is you sometimes get imbalanced, although often the fact that subs sometimes need to be brought in last minute usually leads to certain group being weak anyway.

I'm not sure Group D is the worst for Yudi even. I think Yudi has the highest 1st place chances in Group D than any other group. Under snake seed Group D is typically the Group of Death but also the group that typically has the greatest potential for any player to take 1st. Perhaps Yudi should weigh in with what group he would've picked if he had the choice.

@swkoll said in LegendoftheStars 2021 Championship Tournament:

I mean this is basically what I do for my tournaments. If you do GSL groups, what typically ends up happening is the elimination of the 1st seed vs 4th seed matchup. I like having that matchup there because I've been experimenting with giving prize money to 3rd place in groups. I also think it can be a good opportunity for the 4th seed to get solid tournament experience. It doesn't really cost the tournament any time and if the worse seed doesn't want to play it, they can just forfeit. GSL format has bigger advantages when all the games are being casted and eliminating that 1vs4 is good for the viewer experience.

Ending your day 1 stream coverage of the tournament with "oh I guess he forfeited haha" or "b-but he's playing for honor!" is quite the buzzkill to the supposed biggest event of the year. The point of GSL format is that every game has stakes and everything matters. Even better when you need to bring out the tiebreaker sheet to go and calculate who actually won on some whatever technicality. That tiebreaker system doesn't even exist for this round-robin group stage and can only hope we don't run into a situation of needing to make post-hoc rules because nobody thought about them again.

For example, tiebreaker game? Who chooses the map? Just a random thing that was vetoed? Some map outside the pool? TD gets to do it? Lots of room for lame decisions determining the event already.

My system also does this sort of snake seeding instead of snake draft. This is done mostly for time and organizational complexity, but it also acts as an activity incentive/reward for tournament performance. The only cost is you sometimes get imbalanced, although often the fact that subs sometimes need to be brought in last minute usually leads to certain group being weak anyway.

Then just do captain drafting. I hardly see the organizational complexity, I organized like 30 people to become 3 player teams in the span of 48 hours for another tournament. This is orders of magnitudes easier, even if you let each person pick. Literally set a date and if you can't make it submit a list of players you would want to pick in order of priority. If you do neither, it's picked for you based on whatever seeding you want. Process wouldn't even take an hour.

I'm not sure Group D is the worst for Yudi even. I think Yudi has the highest 1st place chances in Group D than any other group. Under snake seed Group D is typically the Group of Death but also the group that typically has the greatest potential for any player to take 1st. Perhaps Yudi should weigh in with what group he would've picked if he had the choice.

I would put like any person of C and D into the 2 bottoms of A or B and I would say it increases the group quality.

Also great to see that the whole group stage is going to be one day again so only 15% of the games get covered and nearly all potential casting manpower is busy playing.

@ftxcommando said in LegendoftheStars 2021 Championship Tournament:

Ending your day 1 stream coverage of the tournament with "oh I guess he forfeited haha" or "b-but he's playing for honor!" is quite the buzzkill to the supposed biggest event of the year.

That's not a problem with TD'ing or the tournament, and more a problem with the fact that of the 16 best players we can scrape together for FAF, the skill difference between 1st and 16th is astronomical. You love TrueSkill, how much hope does an 1800 ladder have vs a 2400? Even a mid 2200 (me) vs a 2400 tagada or 2300 yudi seems unwinnable in a bo3 format. There will be imbalanced matches in any group due to this.

We also have to account for the fluctuation of skill from AFK players who may or may not prep for a tournament, who may or may not be at their peak form from 4-6 YEARS ago. Try seeding that fairly.

I think the groups are realistically as good as we can get them without manually drafting for perfect balance. Two hard groups, a moderate group, and an easier group (as determined by eyeballing it) seems fine to me. The only other way to possibly do this fairly would be to seed on ladder rating, but there are a ton of people in this tournament who haven't played more then 10 ladder games in this entire year, so that is also subject to some inaccuracies.

...also yes, BH is only a little stronger then me, if at all xD

My eyeballs must not be working, what is the easier group?

@tex said in LegendoftheStars 2021 Championship Tournament:

@ftxcommando said in LegendoftheStars 2021 Championship Tournament:

Ending your day 1 stream coverage of the tournament with "oh I guess he forfeited haha" or "b-but he's playing for honor!" is quite the buzzkill to the supposed biggest event of the year.

That's not a problem with TD'ing or the tournament, and more a problem with the fact that of the 16 best players we can scrape together for FAF, the skill difference between 1st and 16th is astronomical. You love TrueSkill, how much hope does an 1800 ladder have vs a 2400? Even a mid 2200 (me) vs a 2400 tagada or 2300 yudi seems unwinnable in a bo3 format. There will be imbalanced matches in any group due to this.

Why are you talking about this as a problem with TrueSkill I don't know why you quoted me on Double Elim format discussions for this paragraph. If every FAF player was an SC2 Maru equivalent it doesn't change that Round Robin results in situations where a dude is guaranteed a loss simply because there are 4 possibilities for it and people inevitably have bad days. Nobody wants to hear about rounds concluding because a guy quits or seeing games go on for no real reason except a dude feels like continuing to play. It's basically impossible to make it sound epic as a caster especially if anyone in the audience cares to look up why they are watching this game. If we're agreeing that we should just flat out ignore the games and pretend they aren't happening for the audience and the casters, why are are we including them? If both these players want to play "because tourney experience" they can go ahead and do it on their own freetime outside of the tournament. Maybe literally do it immediately after the group stage is over and accomplish the same thing.

In this theoretical situation, exactly a maximum of 4 people are ever benefitting from this round robin with a potential 4 not wanting to play (otherwise they would freely in their own time) with 2 casters not wanting to cover it and a potential infinite of viewers rather watching a game that actually matters for the rest of the event.

We also have to account for the fluctuation of skill from AFK players who may or may not prep for a tournament, who may or may not be at their peak form from 4-6 YEARS ago. Try seeding that fairly.

Easy. Let players in the tournament seed it through captain or sequential seeding. Don't do some random seeding 10 days before the tournament using some system nobody expected to be used for seeding that wasn't even intended to be used to showcase skill. It's like the shittiest thing possible. Seeding by rating would be strictly better, a home-baked tourney ELO would be the best but even that would fall apart due to lack of data breadth.

...also yes, BH is only a little stronger then me, if at all xD

lol

Excuse me FTX, Blackheart is 2233 MMR on ladder, I am 2264. As you have taught us all, TrueSkill is always correct and not to be questioned.

Signing up.

profile picture credits to petric

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IRC channel, Challonge, maps for Group stage added!

You can't have different prizes for 5th,6th and 7th,8th places since they are all equal in a single-elimination bracket.

@tagada said in Legend of The Stars 2021 Championship Tournament:

You can't have different prizes for 5th,6th and 7th,8th places since they are all equal in a single-elimination bracket.

Yeah that is a fair point... i will address that.