December LAN Announced! $100,000 Dreamhack Hannover

[King_Marv]

Sorry Marv but noone is stopping anyone from getting into that top 10 or top 20 players. Its the individual player's own skill which is the key here.

In games with a big enough scene yes you have tournaments for tier 2/3/4 teams/players. AOE scene is too small to have money tournaments for tier 2/3/4 players.

What's happening here is quite natural for a game with such a small scene. I would not expect anything else.

There is a obvious reason why most people will never be top20. It’s called time.

You cannot play 8 hours a day if you don’t earn money with that because you have to spend your time elsewhere while the top 10 players now have 2 very good streams of income. So they seen while playing on Twitch and tournaments. If you live in a low cost country is easier to start but otherwise more or less impossible

But it’s not what I meant anyway. I meant in general that there is a group of 200 people or 300 people who likes to play tournaments Aswell where you don’t get stomped by some expert player in round 1

You have pro tournaments where you can’t play and have no chances anyway then you have open for all where Aswell the pros sign up even if the price is few hundred dollars so you get rekt very early and then there are small tournaments for lower players where you cannot sign up because you have high rating (which is fine imo) I only remember that OGN tournament which focused on that semi pro group

Well anyway just some thoughts from me.

 

[Michaerbse]

There is a obvious reason why most people will never be top20. It’s called time.

You cannot play 8 hours a day if you don’t earn money with that because you have to spend your time elsewhere while the top 10 players now have 2 very good streams of income. So they seen while playing on Twitch and tournaments. If you live in a low cost country is easier to start but otherwise more or less impossible

I think ninja's point is that there is always a cap as to how many players will be able to earn a somewhat relevant amount of money to make it sustainable. In AoE2 this number is sth like 10 to 16. In other (e-)sports (not in all btw) this number may be higher but then the competition is higher and you have the exact same problem and will say "most people will never be top 100 cause they can't earn money before that".

I tend to agree that it would be good to redistribute some more money from the top to qualifiers or tier B events but it should be clear that a few hundred dollars prize money once in a while don't enable anyone to live from AoE2 either so the benefits are questionable.

But it’s not what I meant anyway. I meant in general that there is a group of 200 people or 300 people who likes to play tournaments Aswell where you don’t get stomped by some expert player in round 1

You have pro tournaments where you can’t play and have no chances anyway then you have open for all where Aswell the pros sign up even if the price is few hundred dollars so you get rekt very early and then there are small tournaments for lower players where you cannot sign up because you have high rating (which is fine imo) I only remember that OGN tournament which focused on that semi pro group

Well anyway just some thoughts from me.

That's a different story but I don't really think it's true tbh. As I'm editing aoe-elo data I believe I have a relatively good overview of ongoing tournaments on 2k+ level. There are almost always 1 or more tournaments going on with divisions of 1800 to 2200 players.

In recent times you had e.g. Magna Carto, World Series of Empire Wars and Chaos Cup with multiple divisions, the top divisions mostly filled with 2k+ players. Currently Ring of F1Re is going on for F1Re subscribers with an almost exclusively 2k+ division. Nomad Wars League by paradox has a division for 18xx+ as well.
Besides, there are many regional events. Dragohir Gaming (Circuito Sudamericano) is hosting regular events for South American players with an 18xx+ division, currently the Copa Amazonía is ongoing. You have Copa Supremacia going on for Spanish players and King of Poland 2 for Polish players. Rusaoc Cups for the CIS community are happening more or less on a bi-weekly basis with all levels involved. For German players the KIT SC Plünderparty Season 5 finished not too long ago...

It's always possible to play tournaments on any level if you want to.

 

[Snyper1_]

In recent times you had e.g. Magna Carto, World Series of Empire Wars and Chaos Cup with multiple divisions, the top divisions mostly filled with 2k+ players. Currently Ring of F1Re is going on for F1Re subscribers with an almost exclusively 2k+ division. Nomad Wars League by paradox has a division for 18xx+ as well.
Besides, there are many regional events. Dragohir Gaming (Circuito Sudamericano) is hosting regular events for South American players with an 18xx+ division, currently the Copa Amazonía is ongoing. You have Copa Supremacia going on for Spanish players and King of Poland 2 for Polish players. Rusaoc Cups for the CIS community are happening more or less on a bi-weekly basis with all levels involved. For German players the KIT SC Plünderparty Season 5 finished not too long ago...

It's always possible to play tournaments on any level if you want to.

This is really nice, but tell me in which tournament there arent 24++ players? i know that at least Daut and Slam play Nomad wars and then there is ACCM and Dragonstar who player like every tournament which is out there. I mean this really breaks down the motivation for many players if you see suchs names already signed up

I might be wrong or havent found all the tournaments you mentioned, but most of the times from so called "lower tournaments" there are some real expert signed up aswell. And it doesnt change much if there are 2 or 6 experts signed up...

 

[Michaerbse]

This is really nice, but tell me in which tournament there arent 24++ players? i know that at least Daut and Slam play Nomad wars and then there is ACCM and Dragonstar who player like every tournament which is out there. I mean this really breaks down the motivation for many players if you see suchs names already signed up

Copa Supremacía has LaN and King of Poland has Barles but this is only one player each, not "get[ting] rekt very early" as Marv said. Rusaoc Cups sometimes have Vinch/Dark/classicpro. None of the others has any 2k4 players, including Nomad Wars League (brackets), which is different from the Nomad Wars you are referring to.

Edit: Sorry, Magna Carto, WSEW and CC obviously had stronger players but they also had lower divisions, e.g. in WSEW the final is still pending between Eärnur and Mica. Ring of F1Re has Who as seed #1.

 

[Adico]

I think although prize pool distribution is a topic worth discussing, there is a much bigger and I think much more easily fixable problem: Single-elimination qualifiers.

Thankfully the scene has (almost) moved away from just single Elim brackets (still want to see more double elim playoffs instead of top 8 SE) and started using group stages.

The problem is that Qualifiers are still single elim for a lot of events. Meaning you have players who want to compete but they only get 1 shot, and if they lose just 1 series, then they are out for potentially weeks until the next event.

What is the harm in doing swiss style qualifiers? 5-8 rounds of bo1 matches with players divided into pools of up to 24/32 players. Players get a lot of matches against various opponents, no chance of playing 2 maps and being out, gives you the chance to seed the qualified players based on swiss results. Qualifying players would have had to play the same number of matches anyway, so its not like it takes longer.

Honestly I would even settle for double-elim qualifiers, seeing single-elim brackets just hurts my soul.

 

[LowEloNobody]

This is really nice, but tell me in which tournament there arent 24++ players? i know that at least Daut and Slam play Nomad wars and then there is ACCM and Dragonstar who player like every tournament which is out there. I mean this really breaks down the motivation for many players if you see suchs names already signed up

There are almost 50 players at 2k4 and above. No one is going to host a tourney that excludes the top 50 players, because no one would watch it.

 

[Potkeny]

What is the harm in doing swiss style qualifiers?

Scheduling non-fulltime players' matches.

Its not trivial to schedule already, imagine if it was a days/week-long qualifier-stage with more than the.. top20 or so.

 

[IYIyTh]

What is the harm in doing swiss style qualifiers? 5-8 rounds of bo1 matches with players divided into pools of up to 24/32 players. Players get a lot of matches against various opponents, no chance of playing 2 maps and being out, gives you the chance to seed the qualified players based on swiss results. Qualifying players would have had to play the same number of matches anyway, so its not like it takes longer.

Honestly I would even settle for double-elim qualifiers, seeing single-elim brackets just hurts my soul.

Pros routinely can't schedule even telegraphed/plastered in advance schedules for months, let alone when life gets in the way. Now try herding a bunch of 18+ folks who are playing for fun and don't really care if the results include 3-4 forfeits for 5-8 rounds.

If scheduling wasn't an issue this would be a fine resolution, but it is.

 

[IYIyTh]

Scheduling non-fulltime players' matches.

Its not trivial to schedule already, imagine if it was a days/week-long qualifier-stage with more than the.. top20 or so.

Jynx, you owe me a velociraptor.

 

[King_Marv]

Copa Supremacía has LaN and King of Poland has Barles but this is only one player each, not "get[ting] rekt very early" as Marv said. Rusaoc Cups sometimes have Vinch/Dark/classicpro. None of the others has any 2k4 players, including Nomad Wars League (brackets), which is different from the Nomad Wars you are referring to.

Edit: Sorry, Magna Carto, WSEW and CC obviously had stronger players but they also had lower divisions, e.g. in WSEW the final is still pending between Eärnur and Mica. Ring of F1Re has Who as seed #1.

All those local tournaments are irrelevant for this matter because most people cannot play it.

Scheduling non-fulltime players' matches.

Its not trivial to schedule already, imagine if it was a days/week-long qualifier-stage with more than the.. top20 or so.

About that scheduling problem .. well you have that in any game because people are just lazy. I for myself try to Beginn scheduling on the first day when the brackets are out.2000-2300 players have time to schedule. They play almost every day.

Jynx, you owe me a velociraptor.

Can I have one Aswell ?

 

[Adico]

Lets say each round lasts about an hour. Often, it will be less than that but keeping it simple. Then you play 4-5 rounds on a Saturday and another 4-5 rounds on a Sunday. There you have at least 8 rounds of swiss done.

For warlords' qualifiers, players had to play 2 Bo3 and 1 Bo5 before a break, that is, at least 7 matches in one day, if not more. And what you get is cases like JonSlow going 2-1 in his first match, and now he is totally out of contention. Or any number of other players who only had 1 game to play in the end.

With a swiss format, you can have all players play 6 rounds on day 1, then another 6 on day 2, and it would have taken the same, or less time overall than the actual format used while increasing the number of matches and giving players more opportunities to compete with top players.

Feel like people will DQ later rounds? then we are back to the other topic, of adding prizes to nonqualified finishers, for which you can have a greater appreciation since they played all rounds and were likely very close to qualifying had it not been for a few losses.

 

[Michaerbse]

With a swiss format, you can have all players play 6 rounds on day 1, then another 6 on day 2, and it would have taken the same, or less time overall than the actual format used while increasing the number of matches and giving players more opportunities to compete with top players.

You do realize that this adds an insane amount of admin work? At the same time it will take away quite a bit of hype for the viewers cause you don't know for sure what's going on anymore. There will be endless calculation games on who will qualify in what case. Last but not least this calculation will always come with some drama cause people will qualify due to some tie breaker, some others will fall behind maybe because one of their opponents dropped out after 5 rounds and so on. Generally, Swiss system is not that great at finding the top X players either...
I do agree that one single elimination qualifier is not the best case scenario. I prefer to have at least two qualifiers as for RBW or a double-elimination system. But Swiss system really doesn't sound like the best idea to me.

Feel like people will DQ later rounds? then we are back to the other topic, of adding prizes to nonqualified finishers, for which you can have a greater appreciation since they played all rounds and were likely very close to qualifying had it not been for a few losses.

Not gonna lie, the idea of giving money to someone who otherwise would fail to finish a tournament he signed up for kinda goes against my beliefs.

 

[Potkeny]

Jynx, you owe me a velociraptor.

Here you go.

Lets say each round lasts about an hour. Often, it will be less than that but keeping it simple. Then you play 4-5 rounds on a Saturday and another 4-5 rounds on a Sunday. There you have at least 8 rounds of swiss done.

You take it for granted that players can not only be at their pc for 7-8 hours (you need extra time for breaks, being late, technical difficulties, etc.), but that the time is good for all timezones.

You might expect chinese full-time players to be awake after midnight to play matches, but that's simply not realistic on a bigger scale, so you probably would need regional (timezone based) brackets.. additional admin work, maybe even more admins to cover all timezones? Do we have enough money in the scene to pay all those people? (Though the drama about which bracket is the easiest and if you can sign up for a different one or not would make 'zone happy.)

Yes, if aoe2 was professional enough, it could be nice, but the situation is simply not there for now, imo.

 

[Adico]

You do realize that this adds an insane amount of admin work?

Start.gg already automates the round calculations. I run a weekly event with 5 swiss runs that are completed in less than 5 hours each time. I believe Challonge, BBattlefy, and other sites have automated Swiss calculations as well.

At the same time it will take away quite a bit of hype for the viewers cause you don't know for sure what's going on anymore. There will be endless calculation games on who will qualify in what case.

They can see the standings at the end of every round. If you want to streamline the tail end of the qualifiers for some hype matches then you can seed the top X players into DE Bracket, like the top 16 overall into 4 qualifyings.

Generally, Swiss system is not that great at finding the top X players either...

I mean, various other esports, along with chess, go, and other traditional sports, use it for exactly that reason, to find the top x cut of players/teams. It's great for when you have an unknown (but potentially large) number of competitors.

Not gonna lie, the idea of giving money to someone who otherwise would fail to finish a tournament he signed up for kinda goes against my beliefs.

I think you might have misinterpreted what I meant. By nonqualified finishers, I mean the players who didn't make the top X cut. So say if the top 8 advanced, then the top 9-10 would receive prizes. things like that. Obviously, with the caveat that they need to play all rounds to receive prizes.

You take it for granted that players can not only be at their pc for 7-8 hours (you need extra time for breaks, being late, technical difficulties, etc.), but that the time is good for all timezones.

Is that not already the case? Or are we saying players that join qualifiers have no expectations to make it to the final matches of each day, and thus, if they did, they would DQ their way out anyway?

When players sign up the idea is that they would be available to play till the end. With a swiss format they know they will, and can likely play fewer, but more meaningful, matches instead of 2 Bo3 and 1 Bo5 they can do 6 games one day and know that each game they played matters for their standing.

 

[Potkeny]

Is that not already the case? Or are we saying players that join qualifiers have no expectations to make it to the final matches of each day, and thus, if they did, they would DQ their way out anyway?

Outside of the few S-tier tournaments made for the top20, the qualifying rounds are not all on one day, and usually scheduled by the players themselves during the week, so no, that is not already the case for tournaments made for more players.

 

[siestes]

The idea of a big swiss round for qualifiers is actually interesting, why not something to think about in the future would need to see how to handle stuff like forfeits etc but it could definitely work, if it's well prepared

 

[nimanoe]

I think having Swiss system as qualifier is a pretty good idea, but I would use it to narrow down to a certain amount of players and then use the standings from that to have one round of a Single Elimination system. This counteracts some of the problems with qualifiers that we have now, where a lot of it is based on seeding. This way you can decide what your own seeding will be with a few rounds of Swiss.

Having said that, there's a few downsides of the Swiss system. One of them is that you have to wait till every match from the round is finished until you know who you'll play next round. Which ends up adding quite a bit of time each round (assuming we're talking about weekend qualifiers), as you can't schedule ahead as you usually would.
Another downside is that the final players will likely get qualified based on tiebreakers, which always feels a bit unsatisfying imo. You can counteract this by using either 16, 32, 64 or 128 or 256 players (might be different, depending on how many spots are available), but this would either limit the amount of people that can sign up or you would require an initial round of single elimination.

 

[nimanoe]

Generally, Swiss system is not that great at finding the top X players either...

I disagree, it's actually really good at finding the top and bottom spots, it's the middle spots that are the problem with Swiss. So if you're finding the top 8 or 16 out of 128 players it should be more accurate than a single elimination or even double system, as it doesn't depend on seeding.
However, if you're trying to find the top 16 out of 27, it's not going to be so accurate, especially as there will be multiple admin wins.

 

[Adico]

I'll give you that tiebreakers suck, but with a sufficient number of rounds, that sorts itself out since players are going to face similar opponents each round leading to head-to-head as a natural tiebreaker.

As far as the odd number of signups is concerned, that is basically the same issue as with a normal bracket, hell is even worse, since some even number brackets still lead to funkiness, like 10, 18, 20, 26, etc. At least swiss handles that automatically and only adds 1 bye per round and only if there is an odd number of participants. Something that is alleviated by having multiple pools adjusted to the number of players that are in each and the number of players that need to advance.

Here is a quick example in start.gg:

I "faked" an event with 91 participants (ignore the first block, that is just to fake the player count)

Then I set up a swiss stage (8 rounds), split it into 4 pools (1 of 22 & 3 of 23) and told it the top 3 advances (supposing 4 players are being invited to the finals).

And it just works. Again, its not super pretty and there will be byes in 3 of the 4 pools, but I think it would be an improvement in terms of competitiveness to play 8 rounds like this than to do the same in an SE bracket. And that is only because of the setup I did, if you made it 3 pools (of 30-31) instead of 4 you only have 1 odd-numbered pool at 31.

 

[MuscleChamp]

There is a obvious reason why most people will never be top20. It’s called time.

You cannot play 8 hours a day if you don’t earn money with that because you have to spend your time elsewhere while the top 10 players now have 2 very good streams of income. So they seen while playing on Twitch and tournaments. If you live in a low cost country is easier to start but otherwise more or less impossible

But it’s not what I meant anyway. I meant in general that there is a group of 200 people or 300 people who likes to play tournaments Aswell where you don’t get stomped by some expert player in round 1

You have pro tournaments where you can’t play and have no chances anyway then you have open for all where Aswell the pros sign up even if the price is few hundred dollars so you get rekt very early and then there are small tournaments for lower players where you cannot sign up because you have high rating (which is fine imo) I only remember that OGN tournament which focused on that semi pro group

Well anyway just some thoughts from me.

there was aspiring experts, which was great, so I would not mind

 

[Michaerbse]

Start.gg already automates the round calculations. I run a weekly event with 5 swiss runs that are completed in less than 5 hours each time. I believe Challonge, BBattlefy, and other sites have automated Swiss calculations as well.

What I meant with admin work was rather taking care of a high number of simultaneous games with potential admin res, drops or whatever. You can ignore such things in earlier rounds of a single elim bracket but when you get to the final stages of a big qualifier it is kinda expected nowadays that an admin is available and informed all the time to make decisions in case something happens.

They can see the standings at the end of every round. If you want to streamline the tail end of the qualifiers for some hype matches then you can seed the top X players into DE Bracket, like the top 16 overall into 4 qualifyings.

Sorry but "they can see the standings at the end of every round" 100% proves my point. No tension during the games anymore, just neutral game comments until at the end you look at whatever table the system comes up with.

I mean, various other esports, along with chess, go, and other traditional sports, use it for exactly that reason, to find the top x cut of players/teams. It's great for when you have an unknown (but potentially large) number of competitors.

I disagree, it's actually really good at finding the top and bottom spots, it's the middle spots that are the problem with Swiss. So if you're finding the top 8 or 16 out of 128 players it should be more accurate than a single elimination or even double system, as it doesn't depend on seeding.
However, if you're trying to find the top 16 out of 27, it's not going to be so accurate, especially as there will be multiple admin wins.

Chess rarely ever uses it to determine top X participants. Chess uses a full Swiss System in many open (and some closed) tournaments. In this case there are frequently specific rules on how the prize money is split in case of tie breakers or you even have playoffs for first place (sometimes even below). That doesn't serve the purpose to find the top X participants but the purpose to quickly sort a large field of participants to get somewhat even matches. For most involved players the ranking is completely irrelevant.
I am not sure about other (e-)sports but I think we may be talking about different things here. The Swiss System that CS:GO uses is the one we have seen in BoA iirc where players/teams with x wins/losses drop out as they are either already qualified or already out. The Swiss System that chess uses is the one we have seen in Visible Cup 4 where every player plays x rounds.
The former seems OKish to determine top x participants but probably only works with 16, 32, 64... participants. The latter is really not good at finding top x participants unless you are just referring to a situation where you play until x players are left without losses. But usually you'd play more rounds than that. I'm not saying it's worse than single elimination in that regard but given it's huge downsides with regard to hype and comprehensibility I don't think it adds anything.

I think you might have misinterpreted what I meant. By nonqualified finishers, I mean the players who didn't make the top X cut. So say if the top 8 advanced, then the top 9-10 would receive prizes. things like that. Obviously, with the caveat that they need to play all rounds to receive prizes.

That point was kinda negligible tbh. I just meant that whoever needs money as an incentive to finish a tournament does not deserve any prize money.

 

[rafter]

H. I apologize, that I write here too late, but I want to ask a question about the RULES at that LAN tournament - (2022) Red Bull Wololo: Legacy.
I read the Official Hadoook, but I could not find that,
What Hardware and Software were allowed to use the Players at that tournament ??
Do the player use their OWN computer, Monitor, Keyboard and Mouse and software for them, or the players received that from the Managers of the Tournament ??