While having some huge round robin pools might sound great, keep in mind that the number of matches in each round robin pool is n^2 - n. The larger the size of the RR pool goes up, the number of matches required goes up exponentially. So, say you have 20 total people that need to play in a round robin. If you had one big RR pool, you’d have 380 (20^2 - 20) total matches that need to be played. If you had two RR pools of 10, you’d have 180 ((10^2 - 10) * 2) total matches that need to be played, and if you had 4 RR pools of 5, you’d have 80 ((5^2 - 5)*4).
So, that’s just something to keep in mind. Personally, I think a bunch of 5 man RR pools would be great. It worked fine at Evo, and it could easily do the same here.
Tuan:
I’m looking into having around 16 setups. And each game will be run seperately from each other, leaving all 16 setups to be used for each game. Personally I don’t see how the tournament loses “seriousness” from it being round robin. The finals will still be a regular double elim setup. If we get an extrordinary amount of people, we might change it to 8 pools.
Lay:
We’ll have the underground area to setup casual consoles, etc. for people who are “bored”.
Brad:
As of now, the plan is to have all RR pools be played single match.
I should be at SG Tuesday night if people want to discuss some issues about TS5.
Well, having 16 T.V.'s changes alot.
But the 4 Round Robin pools with 4 T.V’s each station still poses the threat of a #Riot reoccurance. It’d be like #Riot1 but with 4 #Riots going at once! :wow:
If you do change it to 8 pools, then with the current format, you’re gonna have a Final Top 16 Sunday. Might as well have an already stated Double Elimination 16-Man Qualifiers.
As for me mentioning the seriousness of a HUGE RR format, it deals with the amount of matches a player plays and their eventual physical and emotional state (fatigue, frustration, boredom, and motivation). Not saying I’m a psychologist or anything, its just the way things work out in the later stages of some tournaments. Thats why I hate Team Tournaments and their alwayspresent problems of finding players and insane amount of waiting time (But thats another post. Hahha).
I won’t be in town for quite awhile to talk about TS5. But rest assure, that once I’m back I’m gonna kick Ranma0005 in the throat for trying to find his “unmentionable” DVDs.
Here was my original post with my #Riot format problems (ALL BEFORE the 16 T.V’s, and before some re-editing on calculations…I was in a hurry):
TS5! Woot!
I can’t say that I like the tournament format (Round Robin single matches, then final 8).
After running #Riot 1 with the format, I would never run it the same way again. There were too many complications.
Crazy frustrating - 25 man round robin pool was way too big. It became really hard setting up matches half way through the grid. 5x as hard finding people for their matches. Then you have to remember who played who already, which means constant contact with the assigned Record-Keeper staff. Alot of “Did XXX play XXX yet? Tell XXX to go to station 2 after he’s done. We’re waiting on XXX to come play.” Adds unnecessary time for re-recording matches, finding people, switching controllers, etc.
“HOT person” - To try and keep the #Riot running efficiently, the best way to run it was to have one person sit and play all his matches continuously. If it didn’t, it would add minimum 2hours to the tournament. HUGE ADVANTAGE for the seated person. Alot of complaints. So, what if a person only sits for 3-4 matches straight, then the seat changes people? Sounds okay, but then after a while it gets frustrating again trying to find people to play the “new” person who they haven’t played (see Crazy Frustrating).
“Random results” - Not taking anything away from #Riot1 results, but people say that they were random. I agree to an extent, but if a person keeps winning, rather than having odd results, then its not THAT random. IF I did another Round Robin format for #Riot, I would at least do 3/5 rounds single matches.
However, a double elimination 2/3 bracket is the BEST WAY to offset the random factor.
So what do I propose for TS5?
Go with the Evolution format. Pools, Double Elimination Bracket, Final 8.
Decent size pools (preferably 8-10 man pools). The top games will get 50+ people. EX: 60 entrants, 10 pools of 6 people.
“Proposed” TS5:
10 Round Robin pools - 6 people (60 entrants)
1 station each pool - (10 stations used)
5 mins per match (15 matches per pool) = 75 mins
1.5 hours per main game
Top 2 go to Double Elimination Bracket
Double Elimination bracket - 20 people - 2/3 sets - 3 stations - 3 hours MAX (from CvS2 Regionals)
However, if we used 4-5 stations, time would easily be under 2hrs. AND there will be 5+ stations unused to start the next tournament game.
1.5 hours (pools) + 3 hours MAX (bracket) = 4.5 hours
THEN Estimate: 4.5 + 3.5 + 3 = 11hrs.
Each game after the first will be shorter than 4.5 hours because of overlapping times and reused stations.
"CvS2 is halfway done with pools and there are 4 stations free, start the #Reload pools!!"
With the smaller pools, it will be easier to keep the pools running efficiently.
“NOW” TS5:
4 Round Robin pools - 15 people (60 entrants)
3 stations each pool (12 stations used)
5 mins per match (105 matches per pool) = around 3 hours
I’ll be honest with ya, I liked Evo, I like the format, and how its run, certain things I wanted to do differently. I don’t want this to become Tx’s version of Evo and be an exact copy. I like the 4 pool system because that way I’m not making people come back later that dayafter their “fatigue, frustration, boredom, and motivation.” But I also don’t agree with that school of thought. People who have participated in Evo and Showdown in the past, especially CvS2 have been in tournaments that last up to 14 hrs. If people were worried about fatigue and mental frustration, then people would never have been able to last for those monsterously long tournaments in the past.
4 round robin pools helps minimize equipment and time in my opinion. I’ve run a couple of round robin tournaments for MvC2, and later I’m going to try some for CvS2, and 3S. The formula I’ve been using involved around 10 players, 3 stations or cabinets, 2 out of 3. So far, its been taking roughly 3 hrs. For Showdown, the format will be modified to 1 match only, and 1 more station per pool. We should have 16 stations. With overlapping, that should only make things go faster, even being able to start prepping for the next game. I don’t want to start earlier than the time we post though. There might still be issues with space. When we set the pools, we’ll be setting specific times for the next set of pools. Also, I’m planning to start the first pools around noon on Saturday. The UC closes around 2am, which leaves us 14 hrs to run tournament pools. We will be starting promptly at noon, and we will DQ people if need be.
I like most of what you’re proposing Tuan, I like the ideas for making the pools run smoothly. But, I’m still firmly entrenched with my idea of 4 pools, top 2 qualify.
Anywoo, talk to me when you get back, so I can teabag ya for the DVD’s
Might I reiterate that if a total of 60 people enter, and are broken into 4 round robin pools, a total of 840 ((15^2 - 15)*4) matches will need to take place. If you ran 8 round robin pools of 8, less than 448 matches would need to be played.
If time and limited cabinets are an issue, I just don’t think 4 big RR pools is going to work out.
Multiplying each pool by 4 is not valid considering all 4 pools are being run at the same time. Also you should divide the time by the 4 machines that each pool will be using. Another way of looking at the time is we will be alloting 4 hrs for each game for the pools. Divide the groups into their separate numbers, now divide it by a possible 8 machines and calculate the time. I’m not trying to be an ass, I really want to know the breakdown and I’m too lazy to come up with these equations you people are spitting out, I graduated 4 years ago and burned all knowledge of anything involving math outta my head and replaced it with porn.
The reason I multiplied by 4 was to get the TOTAL number of matches that would need to be played, not the total number of matches that would need to be played on each cabinet.
Anyway, going back to the scenario where 60 people enter, and are broken into 4 RR pools of 15. 840 total matches would need to be played.
Now, let’s say one cabinet is used to play all of these matches. If we neglect the delay between matches, and each match lasts on average 1:30, then it would take 21 hours to complete all the matches. Ouch!
If four cabinets are being used, we divide that time by 4. In this case, it will still take almost 5 and a half hours to finish. Remember, that’s the best case scenario. That’s if the matches are all short, there’s no delay inbetween matches, and nobody wanders off and has to be found, or anything like that.
So, to sum that up: If 60 people enter and are split into 4 round robin pools, it will take a MINIMUM of 5 hours to finish.
Now, if we split the 60 people into 8 RR pools (let’s say there’s 64 people so it’s divisible by 8), we’d have 8 pools of 8 people, and 448 matches would need to be played.
If all the matches were played on one cabinet, it would take about 11 hours to finish (448 * 1.5 minutes = 672 minutes).
If 4 cabinets were being used, it would take about 3 hours to finish (672min / 4 = 168min).
Anyway, you have the numbers. The bottom line is that by having smaller pools, you’re going to cut the number of matches that need to be played, and of course the amount of time it will take to complete them.
Don’t be surprised if CVS2 draws 80 and 3S 70, That would mean 20 man round robin pools.
One other point already mentioned is that games ususally go in this
order in terms of time consumption (longest to shortest):
CVS2
3S and Marvel tied *depending on who you ask
Guilty Gear
So it would be safe to say if CVS2 took 4 hours to finish, then marvel and 3S should take 3-3.5 hours and #r 2-2.5 hours. One last
suggestion I have is that marvel could technically run at the same time cvs2 does since one is on console the other is on cabinet and many CVS/MVC players don’t overlap meaning there won’t be alot of waiting for people to finish their matches.
The only problem I have with your suggestion is that even with smaller pools, I’d just have to bring them all back later to do another bracket. I mean I don’t understand how you came up with 16 more systems to come up with the 3 hrs. If I’m looking at the equations you came up with, I think you’re missing a step. I could be wrong but I think the time issue would look like this:
Equation 1:
a.60 people = 4 x 15 man pools
b.16 cabinets = 4 x 4 consoles
c.1.5 minutes = max time for matches
Round Robin format each separate pool = 210 total matches
(210 X 1.5) / 60 = 5.25 hrs
5.25 hrs / 4 cabinets = 1.31 hrs
Since all 4 pools can be run at the same time, with the same amount of equipment, shouldn’t it then only be no more than 2 hrs max?
[(A x 1.5)/60]/4 = time
Equation 2:
a.64 people = 8 x 8 man pools
b.16 cabinets = 8 x 2 cabinets
c.1.5 minutes = max time for matches
Round Robin format = 48 matches per pool
(48 x 1.5) / 60 = 1.2 hrs
1.2 hrs / 2 cabinets = .61 hrs
[(a x 1.5)/60]/2 = time
In either scenario, the time thing doesn’t look that bad, given delays, finding people, etc. I don’t foresee it taking longer than 3 hrs per pool, but here I can allot 4 hrs for each and end reasonably by Midnite. If those equations are right, in a 4 hour span, we should be able to handle 4 pools of 25, which would be 100 entries. If the only reason to change from 4 pools to 8 or more was because we wouldn’t be able to fit it in time wise, then I think its a moot point.
The post says only mvc2 will be arcade, rest will be ps2. As for the format, how are you getting 1.5 minutes for a match? i use 11.5 for 2/3 and 5 minutes for one gane. What about people sharing sticks? configuring controls? Sometimes it’s a victory to start a match in 3 minutes, your saying it’ll be done in half that.
4 pools of 16 (i like powers of 2)
16 players * 15 matches per player * 4 pools = 960 matches
960 * 5 minutes per match = 4800 minutes = 80 hours
80 hours / 16 machines = 5 hours MINIMUM
i see how you would come up with 2 hours if you are saying 1.5 minutes per match, so i think our equations are close other than the time per match. But i go by http://www.shoryuken.com/features/e010621.shtml, which uses 4.5 per match, and that was on arcade, not console.
I think 5 minutes a match is worst case scenario at most, while 1.5 I think is closer to th average. However, if you average all the matches out, I think its closer to about 3 minutes a match. Plugged into the formula thats about 3 hours. I think thats valid considering gameplay only, that would leave an hour to find people, fix controls, map buttons, etc.
When I look at that average of 4.5 minutes, thats back when people played Spiral/Sent, Strider/Doom, Cable/Doom, and super runaway Storm in MvC2; 4 r1’s and Guile/Nak/Balrog in CvS1. Everybody held down back alot more back then. They still do now to an extent, but Sent/Cap, Mag/Psy speeds up MvC2, and CvS2 just has less characters thank god.
I am including the time to find people and such in my match time of 5 minutes. The 1.5 number makes no sense so at least take 3, the match vid of a PERFECT took 1:10, and that wasn’t counting character selection. 1.5 is impossible for any match short of a MSTron near perfect, at least in MvC2
People say that MvC2 is sped up, but consider that every team now has sentinel and/or jump back cable. I think in a lot of cases you’lll see a number more like 2.5-3 minutes just to play the match. I guess if we watched a few hundred match videos and recorded the playtime we would have a better idea.
I like what your doing, i just still think 4 pools leaves you little to no room for error, with a lot of people you can’t control short of a DQ. What about a compromise, instead of 4 pools, run 8 and then a 16 man final. that gives us:
8 pools of 8
8 players * 7 matches per player * 8 pools = 448 matches
448 * 5 minutes per match = 2240 minutes = 38 hours
38 hours / 16 machines ~= 2.5 hours
IMO these numbers are nice, now you can fit up to 64 ppl easily in a 4 hr pool slot, everyone still plays 7 matches, and you have half the people to deal with per pool, the only drawback is that you now have 16 ppl in the finals, i guess have 8 winners 8 losers if it works in your timeframe.
I guess it just all depends on the number of entries. I’m still reluctant to assume we’ll even draw 64 or more for any game that doesn’t have “versus” in the title. If worse came to worse, we could do 8 pools, then run 2 rounds to eliminate half of the finalists. My preference for 4 pools stems from my belief that if you qualified for a finals in a round robin event, you should be rewarded for qualifying, not penalized because you didn’t beat as many people as the other qualifiers. I don’t think there will be time to run a full 16 man final for all 4 games on Sunday.
Hold on, hold on. Mvc2 is gonna be single elimination or is it gonna be 2/3 platform. If IT is gonna be single elimation we might as well call it a weekly. :lame:
I listed single “match” not single elimination, meaning you only play one match against each person instead of 2 out of 3. Round robin means you play everybody in your pool, regardless of if you lose to somebody.
I need to know who has PS2’s in town that came donate them for Showdown, we also need tv’s at least 20 inches. If we can pull in more than the 16 units I had originally planned, we may be able to change it to 2 out of 3 for all games during the pools.