Poll: Do you think seeded pool play would be better at majors?

[Reborn]

The idea has been used at MLG events for a couple years and I personally believe it is superior to the current structure at FGC majors. Any major that has 60-100+ participants would qualify for seeding points and would adopt this structure:

This would benefit tournaments for many reasons:
1) Viewing experience - Viewers get to see top players compete all weekend long. If you watch tournaments at home, you know how dreadful the early rounds can be! Instead of waiting for Sunday and hoping for dream match ups to happen, you are already guaranteed to see 4-5 sets of top players.
2) Seeded competitors - There are only a few times in the entire year that all the top competitors come together to see who is best. This would give them more sets per top player.
3) Open competitors- Many people come to play for fun or are bad players. Instead of losing round 1 against the eventual tournament champion, they get more opportunities to enjoy themselves and play people around their skill level. If they are skilled enough to make it into Pool Play/Championship Bracket, then they are guaranteed multiple sets with top players and a chance in the spotlight.
4) The whole 2/3 or 3/5 debate - 3/5 is obviously ideal in determining who is better, but because of time constraints, 2/3 must be used for most of the tournament. With this structure, "Open Bracket" would be 2/3 and "Pool Play" + "Championship Bracket" would be 3/5.

I would like to know what you guys think. I don't run tournaments so I don't know if this would be feasible when running so many FGs throughout the weekend, but could work for Inj/SF4/UMvC3. Aside from possible timing conflicts, this absolutely benefits all parties that participate at a tournament.

 

[Relaxedstate]

I mean this is awesome...but I don't think FGs get enough players outside of EVO to pull something like this off. Time is an issue also.

Top 8-16 seeded players already usually get 1-2 rounds byes if there is over 64+ players.

Edit: Also top seeded players will be missing out on CrimsonShadow MKI points since they don't get free scrub wins

 

[Reborn]

I mean this is awesome...but I don't think FGs get enough players outside of EVO to pull something like this off. Time is an issue also.

Top 8-16 seeded players already usually get 1-2 rounds byes if there is over 64+ players.

Yeah I am relatively new to the FGC, so I do not know the logistics. Instead of 4 pools, they could do 2 pools and cut all the numbers in half?

 

[NRF CharlieMurphy]

until people can live off of FG's this will never work

The only reason it works everywhere else is because you're either paid to do it.... or at every tournament, every player makes it.

 

[RenegadeVA]

I'm sorry, but while this sounds awesome on paper, it kinda sucks in practice.


1. How are you seeding? Unless you have some sort of non-arbitrary points system nation (world) wide... people are gonna get boned. How are you gonna make that system not biased to certain locations?

2. Moving 16 players past 256 players is just inherently unfair. Major upsets can happen in early rounds.

3. Round Robin sections that merely "place" players in a bracket without fear of elimination are extremely prone to collusion and corruption.

4. You're denying the open players a chance to play the best. Seriously, who wouldn't want to play against Daigo? It's a story you'll remember forever.

 

[Reborn]

I'm sorry, but while this sounds awesome on paper, it kinda sucks in practice.


1. How are you seeding? Unless you have some sort of non-arbitrary points system nation (world) wide... people are gonna get boned. How are you gonna make that system not biased to certain locations?

2. Moving 16 players past 256 players is just inherently unfair. Major upsets can happen in early rounds.

3. Round Robin sections that merely "place" players in a bracket without fear of elimination are extremely prone to collusion and corruption.

4. You're denying the open players a chance to play the best. Seriously, who wouldn't want to play against Daigo? It's a story you'll remember forever.

1) Seedings are done solely based on placings. Due to the various sizes of tournaments, I would restrict this to "Road to Evo" events. I am not familiar with foreign tournament scenes or how they rank players but tournaments could ensure ~4 out of 16 spots are given to foreign players in Road to Evo tournaments with high international participants.

2) While I do understand upsets happens, the round robin is limited to 20 of the best players. 16 who consistently place high at previous tournaments and 4 who make it through the winners of the open bracket of that tournament. These open bracket winners are guaranteed 4 sets with top players.

3) These ranking points would be completely visible to the public. If you do not travel to multiple tournaments, then you risk having to play through the open bracket. To my knowledge, there is already some sort of ranking system for Evo and big tournaments. If not rankings, than some sort of selective placing that guarantees top players don't play each other in the first round. I assume this is the Renegade that runs Civil War so maybe you could shed some light on how brackets are set up for your tournament?

4) While RandomBrah69 won't be able to get his 2-0 thrashing by Daigo, you do reward someone who makes it through the winners of open bracket a chance to play multiple sets among the likes of PL, Reo, Chris G, ect. Personally, I would rather reward players for winning than hand someone a match against Daigo but either way it is a trade-off.

I agree that this would be hard to implement when top players aren't being paid to come to these events and can't travel to them all. The FGC is growing leaps and bounds every year and this could be an idea for the future as sponsorships grow and more money is given to these tournaments.

 

[Chongo]

I mean this is awesome...but I don't think FGs get enough players outside of EVO to pull something like this off. Time is an issue also.

Top 8-16 seeded players already usually get 1-2 rounds byes if there is over 64+ players.

Edit: Also top seeded players will be missing out on CrimsonShadow MKI points since they don't get free scrub wins

Dude I'm top 100 on that list, you know it isn't legit.

 

[RenegadeVA]

1) Seedings are done solely based on placings. Due to the various sizes of tournaments, I would restrict this to "Road to Evo" events. I am not familiar with foreign tournament scenes or how they rank players but tournaments could ensure ~4 out of 16 spots are given to foreign players in Road to Evo tournaments with high international participants.

2) While I do understand upsets happens, the round robin is limited to 20 of the best players. 16 who consistently place high at previous tournaments and 4 who make it through the winners of the open bracket of that tournament. These open bracket winners are guaranteed 4 sets with top players.

3) These ranking points would be completely visible to the public. If you do not travel to multiple tournaments, then you risk having to play through the open bracket. To my knowledge, there is already some sort of ranking system for Evo and big tournaments. If not rankings, than some sort of selective placing that guarantees top players don't play each other in the first round. I assume this is the Renegade that runs Civil War so maybe you could shed some light on how brackets are set up for your tournament?

4) While RandomBrah69 won't be able to get his 2-0 thrashing by Daigo, you do reward someone who makes it through the winners of open bracket a chance to play multiple sets among the likes of PL, Reo, Chris G, ect. Personally, I would rather reward players for winning than hand someone a match against Daigo but either way it is a trade-off.

I agree that this would be hard to implement when top players aren't being paid to come to these events and can't travel to them all. The FGC is growing leaps and bounds every year and this could be an idea for the future as sponsorships grow and more money is given to these tournaments.

Civil War last year had more resources than I needed to run the tournament. So I ran double elim brackets of 32 that fed into the top 16.

Running pools of 16 on two stations each pool is the more "time/resources" efficient way of conducting a tournament, but i have a small problem with the 10% double jeopardy rate.

Also, the more people you have in each pool, the less your seeding matters, b/c it's not like you're walling people off in "pools of death" or "free pools"

1) The problem with your seeding method is the same as EVO's. It sucks. Not all events have equal levels of comp... numbers, skill, and bracket compositions are all different. Also, double elimination tournaments only accurately place the top two finishers (3 is a fair bet, but not always). Everyone else is just where the brackets fall.

Go to Final Round this year. Chris G lost in the FIRST ROUND, and came all the way back to win the tournament... stopping people's projected tournament path well short. So that tournament became not "what place did you get?" it was "when do you have to fight Chris G in losers?"

Since EVO has gone to the pools of 16 format, it HAS to seed its players, and it HAS to do it by an objective system... but that leads to shit like RyRy being seeded 2nd in KOF13 over Romance, Reynauld, Mad KOF, Xian, and others.

That's why they did it like 2013, that placing top 8 at a Road to EVO event got you "a seed", and they would subjectively place you.



3) The FGC isn't professional. This isn't golf or tennis where 95% of pro players show up to 90% of events. ranking according to who travels benefits those who can travel. See: why people thought Noel Brown was good.

4) You didn't address the problems of collusion. That's a HUGE issue in Round Robin (Oh, i'm guarunteed 1st, but if I lose my buddy gets 2nd over this other guy, cool)

5) It'd make for a nice tourney to watch, sure, since you're having so many matches at high levels... but it would also take FOREVER. you're essestially taking the part of the tournament that takes the longest and can't be alleviated by multiple setups, and extending it by 500%.

It's definitely an interesting format for viewership, but it would take all weekend for one tournament.

 

[Owerbart]

No.

 

[Reborn]

3) The FGC isn't professional. This isn't golf or tennis where 95% of pro players show up to 90% of events. ranking according to who travels benefits those who can travel. See: why people thought Noel Brown was good.

4) You didn't address the problems of collusion. That's a HUGE issue in Round Robin (Oh, i'm guarunteed 1st, but if I lose my buddy gets 2nd over this other guy, cool)

5) It'd make for a nice tourney to watch, sure, since you're having so many matches at high levels... but it would also take FOREVER. you're essestially taking the part of the tournament that takes the longest and can't be alleviated by multiple setups, and extending it by 500%.

It's definitely an interesting format for viewership, but it would take all weekend for one tournament.

These are some excellent points and I appreciate you taking the time to respond. I do agree that Round Robin requires very much honesty which you can't guarantee in a tournament environment. Money definitely is an issue as well. I am accustomed to top 16 players getting stipends to travel to tournaments coming from an MLG background. Many top FGC players have "sponsors" but I am sure there are very few that provide enough to cover all of these costs (again I do not know since I am not sponsored by these companies). As for time constraints, I guess it isn't really feasible to do this when players (like a Chris G) are playing 6+ games in a weekend.

I am just trying to think of a better way to have quality matches throughout the weekend. Exhibitions are one way, but do not appeal to me since they don't really "mean anything". Again, I appreciate your input!