A request for better organization!

[BRNKoINSANITY]

Hey guys!

I would like to make a formatting suggestion that may help a lot of tourneys perform better AND provide for some good free publicity!

As you may have seen, I have teamed up with OrbitalPotato for a couple of tournament streams on Sundays. The viewerbase seems to be pretty decent, as we we able to hold 100+ viewers towards the finals, and I think there is a pretty solid demand for more tournament streams. However, there is a serious problem.....

I hate to say it, but tournies as a whole are fairly disorganized on most occasions... The two Sunday tournaments were outstanding exceptions to the general rule, but this is the main deterrant for me casting more tournaments or doing any promotions for them. One other obstacle that comes up is the fact that several of the most common tournaments range anywhere from a weekly cycle of constant games to a 6+ hour period in length. It is really rough trying to cast something that unpredictable, and makes it hard to commit to a time slot.

Any suggestions on formatting would be welcome on this thread! I am pretty much just trying to open a discussion on this, because if we can come up with a solution I would be completely willing to commit to more streams and doing promotions for the tournaments going on with FAF.

My opinion, for what it is worth.

Spoiler: show

Is there any way we could start doing qualifiers? Perhaps all the qualifying matches could take place at the convenience of the players over the course of monday-friday, and then whoever wins their divisions participates in the 8 player final at a specific time on sunday.

[manread]

The next tourney has a rating limit of u500 ladder. With these sorts of tourneys, you get a turn out of about 50% of sign ups. If we had a 1st stage qualifiers most of the games wouldnt get played. Also I would say that we dont get enough signups to warrant a qualifier stage, maybe if we got 64+ sign ups then I would consider it, but only on a ~1400+ tourney where I know most of the people that sign up would actually turn out.

Also, as for being disorganised, I am making it a point never to host a swiss style tourney because they are too prone to messsing up.

[speed2]

I'd like to know what's so disorganized on these tournaments?

The way I see that and what's happeneing is that it goes according to what we plan.

You complain that they take too long? (6 hours you said) well you can't do too much with double elimination unless you put it all on 5km map. Supcom games takes some time to finish and since there's more people there will be also more rounds. So it takes pretty much the time that we plan.

Reason why it all happens in one day is, that there arenet that much people that would have time 2 days in a row, if we wanted to split it. Quite a lot of sign ups happens at the day the tourney is hapenning, depending if people have time that day or not. So splitting the tourney into two days would lead into more quitters than in one evening.

Another option that would come to mind is to give some time period when poeople can play their games. But that have proven be bad idea as well, especially if the tourney isn't top top players who are a bit more reliable.

So for now, we chosed to go with current format for out small tournaments. When everything happens at one evening.

As an example you could take wwpc, there arent even that many sign ups into divisions and still they have one week for knockouts and one week to play champion and yet its not always enough.

[Hascins]

viewtopic.php?f=26&t=10884

this i call organized

[Rudolph'sRedNose]

I'd like to know what's so disorganized on these tournaments?

The way I see that and what's happeneing is that it goes according to what we plan.

Tbf;

The two Sunday tournaments were outstanding exceptions to the general rule

I reckon there is quite a bit of truth in this:

and I think there is a pretty solid demand for more tournament streams

My unimportant 2 cents:
Although great work is being done with the tournaments i can't help but feel they suffer from a lack of publicity at times. Perhaps coincidence but it seems to me ones not advertised on the whats new page just don't seem to garner as much interest as the the ones that are (especially the ones with shiny posters). I don't understand why that space isn't utilised for them. I suspect the majority of casual players have absolutely no inclination to frequent the forums. Why not utilise the main area of throughput? The client?

And there isn't much publicity of the winners either. You have to actively ask or search to find out. People love bragging rights and a bit of publicity for being top dog. And if you didn't participate but see a guy you think you're better than being advertised as top dog? Well, sign me up for the next one. If i can get my awesome strats stored in the vaults of youtube history? Even better.

Way i see it, currently, the biggest competitive incentive for the majority of players is just chasing rating, which may or may not result in players "specialising" in one map. And that can only be fun for so long.

Increased incentive for broader competition can only be beneficial for the community in the long run. Ultimately, I realise people give up a lot of their free time for these things but if these tournaments can be more aggressively publicised, it think they should be.

Edit: Implied but not explicitly stated - increased tournament participation may well result in newer players venturing into ladder with more vigor.

[theeggroll]

The winners of the tournies are often posted on whats new page, just no one looks there. Topic in aeolus and whats new page are always used to announce tournies, just no one ever seems to notice whats in either of those. Those are the two things that are easily available to everyone in faf, if they dont look at it there arent much easier ways to advertise then spamming aeolus with it all the time. Also, chasing rating is honestly not at all why anyone plays in tournies, its for the practice, the avatars, and above all else by a lot, the money. (/me looks at blackheart) The fact of the matter is, Gyle is our main source of publicity, and he's kind of out of the picture, all our casters are either very small or dont produce enough.

[Rudolph'sRedNose]

Recently i can't say i've seen any winners of tourneys posted on the news page...

People certainly don't play tourneys for rating What I'm saying is, for the majority of the player base, i suspect the biggest competitive incentive in FAF (fun aside) is increased rating, which may or may not explain the strange preference for only ever playing one map. Obviously there are a select few players that can only be incentivised by money because there is little else to achieve in the game, but, with enough incentive for the more casual players to compete they may well invest a bit more time and eventually join the high ranks. Casts are the best way for publicity, no doubt, i just wonder if little more fanfare may help in the long run too though. There is only so long people will play setons and gap before they lose interest in a game which may have held them a bit longer with a draw to diversify.

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If nobody knows you won the tourney a week after it happened then was there any point in playing it? And if there wasn't, then will you care who wins the next one?