i agree with invisible brackets, that sounds most useful. no one can really plan anything, they just have to play for spots. unless its close to winners/losers finals. another good idea. Single elimination sounds good too, tourney goes fast, hell we all have time to play casuals and more MM’s for shits and giggles.
I hate no one. Its worst stories out there. Let’s have the standard tourney format like everyone else. Man this has threw a wrench in our system that badShakes Head
How does 1 person change everthing or make everyone all silly. Let’s stop HIM. Just win and foremost he doesn’t Have that much control if he can be beat.
Ill man up and beat that nigga and I’m saying this cause I’m that fucking sick. If their is anyone who is better than me and can prove it also…JOIN ME
I think y’all crying cause y’all think he’s too Good, ill tell you this he can BLEED TOO !!!
I don’t think it necessarily means how good he is or how people can get to grand finals, it just hurts peoples morale to see something like that, they question if any tournament is legit enough to watch. Plus it was suppose to be the “unification of norcal” blah blah blah, norcal did have some pretty hype matches. Months in the making and people feel like they got backstabbed after know a fellow norcalian switched sides of mula. Thats normal yeah, morale is down by 100 points. People start not to care, we lose more vatos in tournies. pay out lowers. pot withers away. Suffocate my life slides hair from eyes
You are looking at the catalyst for the discourse, not the underlying reasons. Too many others are thinking how to persecute a select few people, and you are arguing a point that makes sense but this shouldnt be what the convo is about, we should be thinking how a restructure can benifit more people and create a system that stresses skill but is also more fun. Stay on topic!
Invisible brackets puts too much power on the tourney director and takes away power from the players. It is a player’s right to know the rules and format of an event before handing over their money. The director can just float players as he sees fit and no one would know. And we are all well aware that both players and tourney directors have known to be shady. The brackets and format should be visible to all to minimize abuse. Why would you sign a contract when you don’t know the terms of it?
Unfortunately YouTube - Best Cry Ever
I’ve open my house and arms to EVERYONE despite their history with others. I feel most cases people are different to other people, with me you’ll NEVER have to earn my Respect, you have to earn my DISRESPECT cause I love everyone. MONDAY the door will be UNLOCKED at the Diaper Dojo !!!
:tup: Hiro
I agree with John in the sense that punishment is probably the biggest deterrent to these types of shady dealings, and yes, it becomes incredibly subjective. The big problem I see with implementing new rules and restrictions is that every tournament director can pretty much dictate how he/she wants to run their tournament, so there really isn’t any consistency from tournament to tournament. Creating some sort of standards and a governing body that decides these standards might help create consistency, but honestly I think this scene is too small for that level of organization (not to mention realistically there isn’t a lot of money in the scene). Ultimately, with no real accountability or standards, it will be difficult to prevent unethical behavior.
I do think, as an experiment, it would be nice for some tourney organizers to try a lot of the ideas in this thread, but I’m not sure if they will have much to do with deterring unethical behavior.
I’m only tossing out new ideas away, we can always have a neutral party with the complete brackets if anyone has questions to whether there is favortism involved or not. Feel free to look at the brackets AFTER the tournament. As for the types of programs used for making brackets, I have no knowledge about it, I’m only hoping for a method to encourage more high level play and not just tossing away/not trying in (whatever) matches in order to control one or more players’ fate in a tournament. Like I said, this is just my opinion, and I’m only looking forward to a positive change.
Not even talking about trying to prevent shadiness, I think swiss style tournaments for smaller events (32 or less) would be a really good idea.
It would give the casual players more incentive to come out and maybe online_joe will decide to come out more often if he knows he’s guaranteed 4 matches (two of which should be people around his skill level) and not going two and out.
Other than that, I fully support single elims with more emphasis on casual matches. Or even a double elim tourney with two set-ups dedicated to casuals.
I’m playing this game for the competition, not to get rich. I want to improve and play the best I can. My biggest gripe with most tourneys is too much sitting around and not enough playing.
Bitch please [media=youtube]nfUQ2qBKZ-Y[/media]
70/20/10 payout system will always be there. Running standard double elim tournaments are just too easy and people know how they work. That said, I’m down for new ways for people to play and interact – if there is some incentive involved with it, even better.
I find it real easy to talk about change, but there are only a select few who really take the initiative to get things moving.
I’ll post up here when I find something that works. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to Oct 23rd.
wow did i really just waste my time reading all of this? y are we fixing a system that has been working. If someone is willing to throw a match, its thier decision, they paid the entry fee like all of us. I’m sure if we were all in “that” situation where we know that we aren’t going to win but still get paid, we would do it also. It’s human nature what “that person” did, but it shouldn’t make us change up the system that have been used for years. Now im not saying what was done is good, in fact im kinda disgusted at the fact that it actually did happen. what happened to the love for the game? what happened to just playing it for fun? i agree with choi that a 5 to 10 dollar fee is at best for entry fees. if its to low its not worth doing. if its to high, not many people are going to show up. i also agree with haunts the system is known so its easy for tournament organizers to use it. basically keep it simple and the same 70/20/10 $5-$10 buy in double elim =)
-Oo Ma6icman oO
I wouldn’t say the topic is irrelevant. What happened this weekend was an isolated incident. However, I can see something like this happening again if it goes unchecked. The biggest problem is that most people I spoke to afterward that played in the tournament felt as if they had been “cheated” out of their money. If that continued, people wouldn’t come and there would be no pot.
I do like the way that this thread has evolved from my original ideas and ambitions. When reading this thread now after only a day of discussion, I’m much more interested in the idea of leaving all players, regardless of skill level, with an impression that the tournament was worth their time and money. Formats such as round robin or single elimination with a focus many casuals after the tournament may lead to a better format for everyone. If we try these formats and there’s a general feeling that we should go back to our established ways of running a tournament, I’m for that. By looking to benefit all players with ideas like guaranteeing multiple matches or having set ups for casuals afterward we can not only draw in larger crowds but keep people in the scene longer.
I’m very excited for this. My only suggestion would be that it might do the tournament some good to use our time after the single elim bracket to stream money matches. A thread could be set up before the tournament in which players could call out each other to play a money match on the stream. This could not only lead to more hype but more serious matches that both our stream viewers and players in attendance would love to see and get behind.
And one last thing. Better believe that I’m going to be on my grind to level up and reach that top norcal spot. If there’s something to take away from BotB it’s that everyone is hungry again.
Thanks to everyone for voicing their opinions, especially our respected tournament organizers and players.
What happened this weekend is not an isolated incident.
When thinking about solutions like “making people play their friends early” or “invisible brackets,” you need to consider that these choices can potentially create far more drama than they solve. The cure is worse than the disease.
Furthermore, solutions like pool play and round robin and what have you cannot work if, at the end of the day, you still have a two-person final. A double-elimination bracket (usually) guarantees that the two best players that day will be in the final; pool play and round robin do not change this. So if your current problem is that the two people in the final are quitting and splitting, changing the format does nothing to affect the outcome.
Nobody has actually mentioned why playing friends early in a round robin has any bias or negative effect on the tournament!
I’d guess that’s because round robin tournaments themselves are wildly impractical from a time standpoint.
It seems to me that the planners of these events can’t decide what their goal is. Do they want to have a convention-like atmosphere, where the main point is to socialize and hang with other SF people, or do they want to have a competition to see who’s really the best? When you get down to it, it’s hard to have it both ways. If your goal is to include the most people, you are inherently going to make it less serious, because you are taking away from meritocracy and rewarding the best player.
If you just want to have a convention of fighting game players, then yeah, pot-splitting shouldn’t matter. Everyone’s there just to have fun, and the money is secondary, kind of like a few friends having a poker night. Have low entry fees, random seed, and deal with thrown matches and splits at the end of long-ass tournaments that include everybody. You will probably draw more participants in the tourneys this way, if that’s your goal. But if you’re going to charge money for people to spectate and try to have something focused on competition, then yeah, integrity of the competition matters.
Entry Fees: People so focused on ways to punish bad behavior are looking at this problem too narrowly. Don’t just think about sticks, think about carrots. A better way of encouraging legit competition would be to raise the stakes, not lowering them. If the difference between 1st and second is 50 or 100 bucks, then splitting the pot is no big deal. If the difference is $500-$800, you might see people try harder to get the win. The incentive might be changed in that situation, particularly if one of the splitters thinks that they are a better player than the other. More money = people playing harder as a general rule = less problems?
Seeding: Seeding, again, goes to what kind of event you want to hold. You want a convention, where randoms have the best chance of winning? Don’t have seeding at all. You want a competition, where the best two players play at the end, instead of the second round? Have seeding. That’s your choice. The anti-seeding argument is very weak - as a tournament attendee, I’d think it was lame if the real grand finals happened in the beginning of the tourney. Plus random seeding makes the complaint I’m seeing a lot - that some people get free brackets - worse. Random HAS BIAS people. But the bias in random draws is at the discretion of luck instead of logic. Instead of the best players getting a free draw, you have lesser players getting free draws, while the most talented players can get randomed out by other top players, instead of getting valuable experience working their way up the ladder. This doesn’t begin to mention that “random” draws are easier to rig…
Also, I’m kind of incredulous at people complaining about winners/losers finals and grand finals being too long. If watching the best players play each other bores you, then why are you watching street fighter in the first place? Or it could mean that your game is shit…oops, did I say that out loud?
On a total side note: it is true that paying entry fee does not give you the right to control other people’s actions. But people who do pot splitting and throw matches should think hard about what they are doing in the larger sense. If you delegitimize the competition aspect of tournaments, which is exactly what you are doing, then why should average joes enter and support tournaments? Are they paying for the right to lose to you, who doesn’t give a shit about the outcome of the tournament? Is that worth throwing money at? Why do you think players fixing outcomes in sports is such a no-no? That’ll get you banned for life in many sports, while doing something that’s actually bad, like getting convicted for crimes, will only get you a suspension. I’m just saying.
We can beat around the bush and bicker about rules forever. The elephant in the room is convention vs competition, and until people make a firm decision on that front, we are probably just wasting our time.
PS: I will say this: it doesn’t have to be an either/or choice necessarily. Maybe you can hold separate tournaments, one serious and one for everybody. But trying to do everything with one tournament is just going to bring these two goals in greater tension with each other as the scene gets bigger.