One justification I’ve heard when it comes to fixing brackets is that it makes for an interesting top 8. A lot of organizers don’t want to place top players next to each other early as there is the probability of them knocking each other out early. As a result, you could end up with a lot of random/less skilled opponents in top 8. However, this usually create issues down the line, and tournament organizers can’t do this without showing bias toward certain players.
At the end of the day, fixing brackets doesn’t prove a lot. For one, if the same people are in top 8 it’s because their first and second round matches were very easy. They don’t start running the risk of elimination until they get further in the bracket. This isn’t fair to so called “less favored” competitors who are matched up with higher talent in the first round. Theorhetically the person matched up with a top player will usually find an easier opponent in loser’s, but that’s not always the case. Even with a 2 match double elimination format, there are so random occurances. There are also some upsets.
The justification from some organizers is, “if you’re good enough you can make it despite a hard bracket”. However the same logic should apply to so-called to players as well. In majors I like the idea of seeding. This is something I havne’t seen work very well except at Evo. But overall this makes a lot more sense than fixing brackets. At a local level it’s not possible, but at local tournaments there shouldn’t be a preference in the first place. But there is.
Anyway, I still attend tournaments with obvious fixed brackets because if it came to attending a tournament or just sitting at home, I prefer to attend even if they have fixed brackets. It's just a game to me at the end of the day.
Yeah, my last comment on this “play to learn” issue is that when I say “I’m entering a tourney to learn” it does NOT mean “I expect to lose”. It just means that I’m focused on playing well, learning from what I do wrong, and leaving the tourney a little bit better than I entered.
if you are close enough to get the money in a tournament i can see this being a legit argument. but for a lot of people, it’s just not relevant to their skill level yet who they’re getting seeded against or who they’re not getting seeded against.
just play every match how you get it, you’ll do as well as you could have done, and then try to increase your results for the next tournament.
I’m not really looking into whether or not it’s “justified”; it’s a method that can be used. your suggestion is a method that could be used as well, but it’s just an alternative that achieves the same thing. also, the argument you make assumes that bracket manipulation in such a manner is a bad thing. bad for who? bad why?
I guess I’d be an educated spectator. I’d call myself a tourney player, but I’ve never entered a serious tournament. never organized one either. but at the same time, I don’t really “spectate”
A lot of the language used to explain why is it that the brackets are fixed seems to be centered around the fact that apparently, all that happens before the top 8 is a formality before we get to see the top players play. I don’t understand that mentality; neither do I understand why, if you have that mentality, you still bother showing up to tournaments.
well see, here is where i have a problem with your philosophy pertho, my first tourney was a team tourney and i lost every single match i played (my team carried me to 3rd place) but i was still giving it my all and trying to fight through the nerves. i went to that first tourney with delusions that i might win the whole thing, and all day long i was dreaming of landing beefy combo’s and taking people out, and what happened at that tourney was 0 wins and almost no landed combo’s cause i was way too nervous.
so enter my next big tourney was the regional at fuddruckers where i went in with the knowledge of how weak my skills really were and sure enough round 1 i’m paired off against jason “afro” cole’s balrog with my shitty, barely above flowchart level ken. and the disparity between our skills could not have been more clear in that matchup, yet i was less nervous than my first tourney and actually managed to land combo’s when i found openings. and even more than that after i lost to cole i won my next match before getting knocked out (first tourney win, horray!).
now, following your advice i should have never shown up for my second tourney or any subsequent tourney because i knew i couldn’t win the whole thing, but if i followed your philosophy i would never have improved enough to get my first win or to get the few wins i have so far. and that attitude of “don’t go if your not going to win” is so completely counter productive, how about go to test your skills and see where you need to improve more? because until i got owned at davis i still thought i was pretty good (lol what a joke). and honestly it’s hard to see that outside of a tourney because people are more likely to feel bad for you and sandbag a bit giving you a false impression of your skill
I didn’t say don’t go if you are not going to win. But the thought process in the thread is that going to tournaments is for learning instead of competing. I am lackluster in a lot of aspects when it comes to fighting games. But if I go to a tournament, its because I’m going to my hardest to win. I got wrecked 6 different kinds of dirty in both SF4 and Tekken 6, but before the match was over my only thought process was centered on how to beat whomever I was playing. Yet what I am getting out of the thread is “i’m gonna lose anyway so might as well learn a thing or two.”
I get nervous, scared, jittery, I doubt my skills, constantly remind myself of things I learn, stress the shit out because I didn’t get enough practice the week leading up to the tournament. But when you plug in your stick (or preferred method of playing) and the match starts, all those thoughts need to go out the door. Apparently the problem here is that with too many people those thoughts stay and they allow tournament organizers to do blatantly shady shit.
I don’t see where anyone is saying that or anything like that, maybe I am missing something. But I mean really, the fact of the matter is that I have taken 5 hour drives to play in a tournaments where the prize money for first wasn’t enough to pay for gas. Now I realize that a part of this is just because I live in the Midwest where competition is hard to come by, but really, most people here aren’t going to tournaments just to say they got first in tournaments, they are going to play some people in a game they like playing. And really, whats wrong with that? Is there something really wrong with joining a tournament in order to play a game you like, win or lose?
Because the bracket is not being “optimized,” simply manipulated so that certain people have a smaller chance of playing each until they get to a certain point. This decision is made to benefit only those people. Takaki’s post above: “If you use seeding everyone will have the same difficulty of reaching those semi finals.” Pherai’s post above also explains it: If it’s double elimination, meaning you are more concerned with the placings besides first, I think you should try to distribute the skilled players evenly throughout the bracket so some bum doesn’t get an easy ride to 20% of the pot…I don’t care that much if some big name gets outted early, but don’t expect to not hear people complain about it." So…yeah…
“how seeding should be done is not an exact science, it really needs a lot of discretion based on the event you are holding.”
This is the reason why. It is no science at all, you just randomize everybody.
“And really, whats wrong with that? Is there something really wrong with joining a tournament in order to play a game you like, win or lose?”
Nothing at all. But if you’re main concern is just being able to play the game with other human beings (and I know what this is like and how much it sucks to try and get that happening in the first place), then we, as a community, are better off organizing events where we can set up a bunch of TV’s and consoles to enjoy playing the games as opposed to trying turn a tournament into a meet and greet.
The difference is as a casual or competitive gamer. I have a friend who play SFIV way more than I do. He’s on it everyday. He’s always in training mode. I mean the guy loves the game. But why does he play? So I can come over his house every week and he can see if he can beat me. For me, that’s a waste of time. I don’t want to get better at a game just so I can possibly dominate someone in meaningless casual matches. Anytime tounrament time rolls around, there is always an excuse from him. His sister gets sick, he’s gotta leave early so he can’t enter the tounrament, etc. This is the same guy who says he more comitted to Street Fighter than anyone else in the crew, but he’s the only one who never enters tournaments. For me, he plays and practice Street Fighter only to get good at casuals. In tournaments (that he even attends) he’s always trying to get some casual games going. But overall he’s a sucky tournament player, and he’s not willing to put his real skills to the test. I mean, playing the game you love is one thing. But when you invest time and energy you want to see how it pays off.
I can understand people who are competitive, but yet they come in dead last in a tournament because they got a hard bracket vs someone who got top 8 because they had a bunch of tomato cans lined up the entire tournament. I personally find it annoying. Now if the whole thing is random, then that’s the luck of the draw. Unfortunately when the tournament orgnaizer does this, then it’s annoying. And at the expense of sounding like a jerk, our own local organizer does this a lot. It makes for a boring tournament, because it’s always the same top 8, and top 3 almost always split the prize money. I want to see definitive winner. The tournament organizer is clearly biased towards certain players. I still go to tournaments because I’d rather see if I can go against the odds, than play at home and casuals all day. My friend on the other hand said he won’t support this anymore (as he’s always looking for an excuse to not enter tournaments anyway). I’m saying such practice do alienate certain players in the long run. Personally I don’t care, because if I’m the best I have to beat the best. But it sucks that it’s an easier road for select players.
Just wanted to add that I’m a tournament player (HD Remix, #5 at Evo 2009). I ran an online one once or twice but that doesn’t really count I guess.
To the argument that “if you’re good enough, you can win against fixed matches anyway”, I’d say it’s missing the point of a tournament. Yeah sure a hypothetical top player could probably win even against disadvantages. He could potentially also win against 2:1 odds, or maybe with a busted controller button, or against a guy who uses a banned boss character. But that doesn’t mean that these situations are desirable in any way. The whole idea is that before the tournament starts, everyone is on an equal footing - anyone could potentially win, and the players who perform better in the tournament that day are the ones who are worthy of winning it. The tourney organizer’s job isn’t to try to predict what the top 8 will be - the tourney itself will resolve that.
Other posters have already addressed the other complaints against random, but I just want to point out the obvious solution again: casuals. At every tourney I’ve been to, there are a lot of casual games played before and after the tourney - these really are your best chance to play against new opponents and learn new tricks. You don’t have to compromise the integrity of the tourney itself to get those benefits. :wgrin:
This may be totally a regional thing. But on the East Coast, and the South East, people are known to sandbag in casuals. I personally don’t do it, but I know player who do.
I don’t think it’s inheritedly wrong to sandbag. I just figure if someone knows my tricks and tactics, I’m going to have to adapt mid match. I think overall a good player will learn how to overcome even if he choice shenanigans and tricks are no longer effective. I mean I can understand you do what you can to win, even try to gimp someone out with a strat that’s hard to adjust to. But I don’t think you’re a very dynamic player if you’re only relying on a few tricks/setups, and your entire game is shot once that’s figured out.
One of the characteristic of sandbagging I’ve noticed with our local scene is that many will play much more unsafe. Or they’ll try to be unnecessarily flashy or try impractical combos during casuals. This is also used as a bait and switch. A lot of times they’ll sandbag to give you a false sense of confidence, so that you’ll agree to money match them. And then when that happens, they’ll start to play “for real” and be a lot more safe, and make fewer errors.
No worries, I understand that. It’s just that none of that has any bearing on the discussion on pairing. Whole separate issue.
Besides, people still have not posted a good reason for not randomizing the brackets properly aside from giving “low” level players a chance to somehow compete and wanting to the top to meet each other at the top. You know, two reasons that completely undermine the idea of a tournament.
I really do understand your point here, but please read my post to see my point. There are certainly situations where seeding is merited. Many, many big events, and not just limited to fighting games, seed tournaments. The reasons may not be exactly clear to you, but there are good reasons.
The thing is, the way casuals go isn’t really a great way to get playtime in with lots of people. As ridiculous as it may seem, a tournament bracket is, by a significant margin, the easiest way to ensure that people get to play a variety of other people. In casuals, usually its winner stays, which is great, but it usually means the best few players get lots of rounds in. This is fantastic for getting experience against the best, but variety is the spice of life.
Edit: I realize that this seems to directly back only random seeding, but small scale events and big tournaments like evo are entirely different things. The tone of this thread seems to be more about Evo scale stuff, and less about local, where I’ve been trying to integrate both to some extent.
Brahn: This is more of an issue with this particular player than at large from what I’ve seen. Really, the only difference I need to hear in the story to make it not weird at all to me is for him to just say he doesn’t want to play in tournaments instead of making excuses. I know tons of people who are similar but do end up playing in tourneys only to get dead last.
you do have to understand that tournament organizing is a business. I can understand, to a degree why tournament organizers like to give a higher preference to more established players. Back in the days of arcade tournaments, it didn’t matter who got into top 8, because only a few spectators would see the match anyway. Now days it’s become a different ballgame. You have streams of local tournaments. So in a way, the tournament organizer is going to want to put the real draws in top 8. The thing with my local scene is that top 8 are all friends, and they generally split pots. To me this makes the local scene seem like more of a joke, as it shows that top 3 are not willing to play each other if it’s amongst friends. The thing is, certain crews know the organizer, and they generally get easy easy brackets. Of course the good thing is that more people who are not part of the “clique” are getting top 8 now. I was able to get top 8 at a tournament a few months back. So I think in a way it’s given some players an incentive to step of their game to try to break the mode of organizational bias and top 8 circle jerking that’s been evident at a lot of our local tournaments.