This is how GSL into SE works. You forget the advantage group winners have but not dropping a single game and match them vs someone that has lost a single bo3.
This style of bracket is very sensitive to upsets which are very easy to get with short series and fast and snowbally game mode.
In OG GSL you would now make 2 GSL groups with two group winners and 2 second places and play the same fiddle.
This gives all players a chance again and both Hera and Lierrey despite facing each other in r1 can both still qualify for next round or at least get to top6 with a prizepool jump since then you have a finer level system than in SE.
GSL into SE is worst of both worlds. Because in classical SE you at least seed the players by overall skill, here ro8 matches are determined by one bo3 match. This SE brackets we had already in kotd and show the major feature of this bracket system. Another premature finals in ro8 and liereyy might lose here and then drops out below exp just by being unlucky to be matched vs Hera who messes up winning his group.
Hera should take a longer road through the losers bracket to protect people without loss of facing him too early in a SE scenario of where they lose their no loss advantage. Thats what ESL brackets provide.
These are ESL brackets with rematches to display that the brackets then are 100% same as for GSL groups. The only difference is the intermediate stage that leads into SE.
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And these 6 players then go into SE where Winner of Winners match are set into Semis already. So technically if Liereyy loses here and Hera wins Liereyy could have avoided that qf by winning vs Yo.
Do you think if not two phases of GSL groups then at least all group matches being Bo5 would have helped?
At any rate hopefully @robo and others involved with esports production read this because it is very good insight they would be foolish to ignore.
Please not, if you make it best of five than you have to make it single elimination, otherwise you loose the spirit of the tournament and things just get boring tbh
Thats bullshit. The brackets are very neutral and dont care for player names. It doesnt base on the assumption that Hera is better than Vinchester, it bases on that we dont know. But they can prove their actual strength in the ongoing tournament. Just having random upsets forced to have some varience of players, despite not being the better, is also unfair.I know you are obsessed with creating tournaments that are designed to make it as easy as possible for the favorites on paper, but in my opinion that’s wrong. Everything you write depends on the assumption that Hera is actually better than Vinchester, which might or might not be the case. I don’t believe there is any additional value in having the expected four player in the semifinal of every tournament - on the contrary, I appreciate the variance coming from one of the usual favorites slipping up here or there. In my mind, this tournament format has been great, produced high quality games, excitement and surprises, which is all I ask for.
This system is very common in sports in general btw, for example in soccer, and works great.
In any way, I think Lierrey will win vs Hera, making this whole format discussion obsolete
Please not, if you make it best of five than you have to make it single elimination, otherwise you loose the spirit of the tournament and things just get boring tbh
I don't see how the brackets are "unfortunate" or "hurt all players". The rules of the game were clear from the beginning. When Vinchester and Hera played, they both knew the winner would get an "easier" quarterfinal and the loser would get a "tougher" match.Thats bullshit. The brackets are very neutral and dont care for player names. It doesnt base on the assumption that Hera is better than Vinchester, it bases on that we dont know. But they can prove their actual strength in the ongoing tournament. If Hera loses to Liereyy and Vinchester reaches Semifinals do we then know who is the better player ? Not at all, as much as we dont know how MbL would have fared against Hera or Yo. All I say is that the brackets are very suscetible to upsets and lead to very unfortunate brackets that hurt all players and not just the loser.
I'm not sure really what you mean here.I mean
Is AoE the only esport that ignores all other possible brackets out of pure pride and then refers to soccer all the time, just because they care least about competitively viable brackets.
Well, but why dont we do Bo1 SE tournaments anymore ? Why did we seed in SE for so long ? Because there are settings that are good and others not so much. GSL into SE is something that has established the last months, but has this major flaw. All i say is that you dont need to look at the quarterfinal bracket and think they look bad, its very natural consequence of the tournament system.I don't see how the brackets are "unfortunate" or "hurt all players". The rules of the game were clear from the beginning. When Vinchester and Hera played, they both knew the winner would get an "easier" quarterfinal and the loser would get a "tougher" match.
For Liereyy who qualified first of his group, it is "better" to face Vinchester rather than Hera only if it is established that Hera is stronger than Vinchester. And while it's certainly true in terms of consistency over many tournaments, it has not been proved in this tournament at all.
You can maybe make an argument for Group Stage winners not having the possibility of "losing" a match while Group Stage seconds were allowed a second chance. But that's the rule of the game and everyone knew what they were signing up for.
Eventually the bracket will determine a winner, who will have been the best player overall in the competition.
If you want a full "fair" breakdown of the ranking of every player in the tournament you need to do a round robin. Aside from the logistical problem (good luck organizing a RR with 16 players), it will be extremely boring and repetitive after a while.
A bracket system is supposed to be a compromise between fairness, excitement and efficiency (determine a winner in a limited amount of matches). With that in mind I think this system achieves just that.
I'm not sure really what you mean here.
In competitive AoE over the past 5 years I've been following the scene, we've had: single elimination qualifiers into round robin into grand final (Strike the Balance), single elimination (KotD, HC, many others), double elimination (Masters of Arabia 2v2, DMWC, many final stages of tournaments), swiss system (Escape All Stars, NAC 2), modified swiss (BoA), GSL (KotD 3, WC2v2)...
Most events are fully seeded, some are not seeded at all (HC), and a rare few had partial seedings (RBW qualifiers).
We have had a large variety of events using different systems. We refer to football because it's the largest sport in the world. They most likely asked those questions a long time ago, and decided for the compromise we have today. Many sports actually do not completely seed their brackets, or use "unforgiving" settings (tennis in Grand Slams for example, is a 128-player, 7-round, single elimination bracket where only the 32 best ranked players are seeded. This means the #1 seed can play anyone from seed 128 to seed 33 in the first round). Yet noone would complain these are not "competitively viable".
If you want to win a tourney you need to perform best when it matters the most, and, in the end, the best player wins. Even in the early days of the Escape BO1 tournaments, Viper was winning most of those, despite the very unforgiving settings.
I think that the spirit of the tournament in this case is 'fast-paced & action-packed" so while I don't necessarily agree that Bo5s at a point when players usually aren't even at risk of elimination is boring, it would definitely slow things down significantly.I don't see how playing Bo5 rather than Bo3 loses the spirit of the tournament?
Thats bullshit. The brackets are very neutral and dont care for player names. It doesnt base on the assumption that Hera is better than Vinchester, it bases on that we dont know. But they can prove their actual strength in the ongoing tournament. Just having random upsets forced to have some varience of players, despite not being the better, is also unfair.
To accuse me of wanting to rig the tournament to have higher names in there shows that you dont know anything. I have criticized tournaments before, where I felt that that is happening. I only care about reliable competitive standars which should be the focus of every competitive tournament that is more than just an entertainment game show.
If Hera loses to Liereyy and Vinchester reaches Semifinals do we then know who is the better player ? Not at all, as much as we dont know how MbL would have fared against Hera or Yo in KotD3. All I say is that the brackets are very suscetible to upsets and lead to very unfortunate brackets that hurt all players and not just the loser.
But hey brackets so ****, that Niman has them in his "What I wish for 2021 thread" and they are used in other esports too. The brackets has the benefit of havin many interactions between players without much redundancy. And you can then give players a higher skill resolution since you are able to pay out
1st, 2nd, 3rd/4th, 5th/6th, 7/8th, 9-12,13-16
A resolution neither SE nor GSL into SE has to offer.
Is AoE the only esport that ignores all other possible brackets out of pure pride and then refers to soccer all the time, just because they care least about competitively viable brackets.
Yet noone would complain these are not "competitively viable".
I think that the spirit of the tournament in this case is 'fast-paced & action-packed" so while I don't necessarily agree that Bo5s at a point when players usually aren't even at risk of elimination is boring, it would definitely slow things down significantly.
Thats bullshit. The brackets are very neutral and dont care for player names. It doesnt base on the assumption that Hera is better than Vinchester, it bases on that we dont know. But they can prove their actual strength in the ongoing tournament. Just having random upsets forced to have some varience of players, despite not being the better, is also unfair.
To accuse me of wanting to rig the tournament to have higher names in there shows that you dont know anything. I have criticized tournaments before, where I felt that that is happening. I only care about reliable competitive standars which should be the focus of every competitive tournament that is more than just an entertainment game show.
If Hera loses to Liereyy and Vinchester reaches Semifinals do we then know who is the better player ? Not at all, as much as we dont know how MbL would have fared against Hera or Yo in KotD3. All I say is that the brackets are very suscetible to upsets and lead to very unfortunate brackets that hurt all players and not just the loser.
But hey brackets so ****, that Niman has them in his "What I wish for 2021 thread" and they are used in other esports too. The brackets has the benefit of havin many interactions between players without much redundancy. And you can then give players a higher skill resolution since you are able to pay out
1st, 2nd, 3rd/4th, 5th/6th, 7/8th, 9-12,13-16
A resolution neither SE nor GSL into SE has to offer.
Is AoE the only esport that ignores all other possible brackets out of pure pride and then refers to soccer all the time, just because they care least about competitively viable brackets.
I don't see how playing Bo5 rather than Bo3 loses the spirit of the tournament?
FanboyYo 3-2 DauT
ACCM 3-1 Vinchester
Hera 3-2 Liereyy
Viper 3-0 Villese
-Yo gets a really favorable draw, should be a relatively easy path to the finals for him while Lierey/Hera and to a lesser extent Viper will have to navigate a gauntlet to get there.
We still have an "unused day" in the first weekend on Friday, so having the second round as Bo5s would still be possible I think.You would need a third weekend, kind of going against the idea of skipping dark age to get more condensed action non-stop. But that’s obviously personal preference
I'd say the brackets that @RobChang provided are harder for Hera than the bracket he currently has.I know you are obsessed with creating tournaments that are designed to make it as easy as possible for the favorites on paper, but in my opinion that’s wrong. Everything you write depends on the assumption that Hera is actually better than Vinchester, which might or might not be the case. I don’t believe there is any additional value in having the expected four player in the semifinal of every tournament - on the contrary, I appreciate the variance coming from one of the usual favorites slipping up here or there. In my mind, this tournament format has been great, produced high quality games, excitement and surprises, which is all I ask for.
Are you sure? From what I know football uses Round Robin pretty much in every tournament. I don't think they use it because it's more competitive though, but more because of logistical reasons. They can sell tickets earlier, prepare the stadiums let fans book stuff much further in advance, compared to GSL or Swiss formats.This system is very common in sports in general btw, for example in soccer, and works great.
This didn’t age well :D
I could see a Vinch vs. Yo match going long and even being a toss-up.
I think he means: round robin group stage into SE reaches pretty much the same matchups as GSL into SE, so with regard to "fairness" it's the sameAre you sure? From what I know football uses Round Robin pretty much in every tournament. I don't think they use it because it's more competitive though, but more because of logistical reasons. They can sell tickets earlier, prepare the stadiums let fans book stuff much further in advance, compared to GSL or Swiss formats.
yes, one round of BO5 could work, but not two. But yeah, personal preference there.We still have an "unused day" in the first weekend on Friday, so having the second round as Bo5s would still be possible I think.
EW with RBW settings is so beautiful because there isn't a meta yet and there is a lot of space for strategical thinking. Daut today gave the biggest strategical masterpiece in a very long time.