Some thoughts about tournaments

[Giuseppe551]

We've had more than our fair share of mixed map/map draft/civ draft tournaments as of late. It seems in fact to be the new default tournament setting: just swap out a few maps, put a new banner on it, rinse and repeat. Here are some stray thoughts for tournament organizers to hopefully spark a bit of change going forward:

1) You can have the maps for each game in a series be pre-set instead of doing a map draft + home map pick. If running a multi-round event, you can play different maps in different weeks
2) You can run a tournament on just one map or one style of map
3) You can have players ban more than just a few civilizations. Heck, you could ban half the civs if you wanted to, it's your tournament. No pro is going to be ruined if they can't play Spanish/Malians on Nomad
4) You can ban specific civs on specific maps, like EGCTV does in aoe4
5) You can still have a civ draft but also incorporate predetermined mirrors into the series (mirrors can be fun in low doses but we never see them anymore)
6) You could do semi-random civs, where matchups are randomly generated by the admin and then players ban out the ones they don't want to play (think Fair Civs cup but with more randomness)
7) You don't need 15+ maps in a map pool, you don't need new crazy maps, and you don't need maps with 50 gold/stone piles on the outside or water in the corners
8) If your tournament has several rounds, you can have a different civ pool for each round or take the Wandering Warriors approach and ban most popular civs in the previous round
9) You can play around with game settings, mixing in Empire Wars or even Castle Age start along with RM (I personally think Castle Age start has a ton of potential...new build orders, shorter games, etc.)
10) If hosting a TG event you can make it a mix of 1v1s and TGs. It doesn't need to be one or the other
11) When making groups/seeds, you don't have to use some formula in a spreadsheet to rank players. You can have the players rank themselves, or you can do a GSL-style selection where the players actually draft one another to create groups (this used to be great fun, and is sadly discontinued. It would be wonderful in aoe2).
12) You can run single elimination events. For big tournaments I don't think it's best but they absolutely have a place in the competitive ecosystem. They're undeniably cutthroat and exciting.

TLDR there are lots of ways to run a tournament. Please make tournaments more interesting.

 

[T90Official]

TLDR there are lots of ways to run a tournament. Please make tournaments more interesting.

Host a tournament. I’ll chip in the first hundred bucks.

 

[JoshuaR]

I agree with both of the above posters.

 

[Giuseppe551]

Not sure what the point of that response even is since you know random viewers don't just go around hosting tournaments. I do what little I can though. And yeah I tried to mix up the settings in those and that'll be the case if/when I'm able to do more.

The original point stands: we have way too many mixed map, map draft + civ draft tournaments lately. It is boring and repetitive.

 

[Liamsmalley7]

In the past ~4 months we went from:
-Empire Wars
-9 vil start Warlords with an entirely new map selection process (and maps we basically never see in 1v1s like Black Forest, Steppe, Baltic etc..
-slightly different 9 vil start Grand Melee, with some new maps (also straight up single elimination)
-back to 3 vil start with TTL, promotion/relegation system

I feel like it's been a pretty diverse few months

 

[LeoMontero]

the only thing is missing is a 4v4 TG CLAN tournament. a lot of people dont like the 4-4 format, but i love it.
the showmatches that WWP organize, are my favourites. Specially the all arabia no repeat civ in the hole set. there were really amazing games, back and forth, in all the showmatches, and they finish 4-3 4-2, with really close games.
i think there is potential for a 4-4 clan tournament with at least 6 competitive teams. maybe 8 teams. a group containing all, play all against each other, all arabia. then finals between the best 2 or semifinals and finals.
the posible teams: SUOMI, GL, WWP, AM, MYINSANITY, one with dogao, fire, slam (they play together in BoA, and did really well), and one more player, and the last containing ACCM and the other vietnamese, dont know the relation with Bact now.

 

[Giuseppe551]

In the past ~4 months we went from:
-Empire Wars
-9 vil start Warlords with an entirely new map selection process (and maps we basically never see in 1v1s like Black Forest, Steppe, Baltic etc..
-slightly different 9 vil start Grand Melee, with some new maps (also straight up single elimination)
-back to 3 vil start with TTL, promotion/relegation system

True we had EW somewhat recently. But I really wouldn't call the other tournaments diverse...9 vil start doesn't make up for the complete lack of civ diversity that these map + civ settings bring. And promotion/relegation is irrelevant as it doesn't change gameplay at all. New maps in Warlords for example are fine I guess, but again the fact is that the greater variety in maps the less civ diversity you'll see. Whereas if you ran a tournament on just closed maps or open maps you're bound to see more interesting matchups.

If people are fine seeing the same civs on the same maps over and over then great let's keep doing that. Personally when I see Spanish Malians on Nomad I turn it off and check in later, I simply won't watch that.

 

[LowEloNobody]

Could you address literally 99% of your criticisms by just increasing civ bans?

 

[LockeAoC]

I think the bigger issue is the overwhelming number of events back-to-back. Players feel a little burnt out. It’s time for a tournament schedule/roadmap/calendar… whatever you want to call it.

 

[Giuseppe551]

Could you address literally 99% of your criticisms by just increasing civ bans?

Sure, that's why it's on the list. Dracken has a nice real world example of how to do that in another thread today. Doubt that any big organizers will utilize it but would love to see it.

Regarding frequency of tournaments I'm not sure. If they all had varied settings I think I'd be fine with it. Maybe the players disagree though and we do need an off-season of sorts.

 

[Liamsmalley7]

True we had EW somewhat recently. But I really wouldn't call the other tournaments diverse...9 vil start doesn't make up for the complete lack of civ diversity that these map + civ settings bring. And promotion/relegation is irrelevant as it doesn't change gameplay at all. New maps in Warlords for example are fine I guess, but again the fact is that the greater variety in maps the less civ diversity you'll see. Whereas if you ran a tournament on just closed maps or open maps you're bound to see more interesting matchups.

If people are fine seeing the same civs on the same maps over and over then great let's keep doing that. Personally when I see Spanish Malians on Nomad I turn it off and check in later, I simply won't watch that.

I honestly feel like there are only 2 civs that we genuinely never see, which are Celts and Slavs. Every other civ has a time or a place where it gets used, whether it be Nomad, Arena, Cross or Atacama, just about every civ gets used now or again. Liereyy even picked Goths in the finals of Grand Melee.

 

[paradox303]

Not sure what the point of that response even is since you know random viewers don't just go around hosting tournaments. I do what little I can though. And yeah I tried to mix up the settings in those and that'll be the case if/when I'm able to do more.

The original point stands: we have way too many mixed map, map draft + civ draft tournaments lately. It is boring and repetitive.

Why not? There's nothing stopping people hosting tournaments if they put up the money and put something together. Players will join, all people have to do is promote the event. For smaller events, I don't even believe you need to be a streamer for it to be a success. It would certainly help to have a streamer on board to cast events though.

I feel like most of your suggestions aren't bad at all, that's because quite a few of them are being done already.

In short, if there are certain settings you want to see, you should make it happen and not wait around for others to do it.

 

[Giuseppe551]

I feel like most of your suggestions aren't bad at all, that's because quite a few of them are being done already.

Which ones, in which tournaments? KOTD is the last S tier I remember that didn't have a wide variety of maps, map draft, and civ draft.

 

[kalpit00]

I honestly feel like there are only 2 civs that we genuinely never see, which are Celts and Slavs. Every other civ has a time or a place where it gets used, whether it be Nomad, Arena, Cross or Atacama, just about every civ gets used now or again. Liereyy even picked Goths in the finals of Grand Melee.

We only see more civs in longer games, like BO7s or more because there are more maps to play. Even then there are clear favorite civs on certain maps. Unlike Redbull or EW which has quite a drastic change in terms of maps, we don't see as much civ variety.

I would also say regarding that goth pick, the competition is so high that you cannot justify going goths on arabia even if you are 100% certain you will face mayans, because you will inevitably lose vs a top 8 player. The skill has improved that much on DE.

And I agree we don't see celts or slavs nearly enough because these are civs stuck in the middle of the spectrum (they have good eco, but not good enough eco to justify on an open map like arabia where mayans, aztecs, chinese are preferred) And if you pick them on closed map for the Halb-SO comp, they lack bbc which all the new powercrept civs get for no reason (poles, gurjaras, hindustanis). In fact, HC bbc is the counter to these civs, and so many newer civs have access to them on top of their already flourished tech trees

 

[Musashi]

Great tournament, loving it!

 

[MembTV]

Always good to have suggestions, feedback is always welcome, noted some, but remember that hosting events is very hard and people preferences is very diferent for each one, hard to please everyone.

Anyway Stay Tunis, you might be happy soon

 

[bigus.dicus.official]

Host a tournament. I’ll chip in the first hundred bucks.

this is an arrogant response. the guy s spent time writing a feedback and this is how an ex top streamer responds?

 

[Uselessaurus Rex]

this is an arrogant response. the guy s spent time writing a feedback and this is how an ex top streamer responds?

To me it sounded like T90 quite liked the ideas and thought they were interesting, so offered money... don't think he was being arrogant.

 

[T90Official]

I wasn't being sarcastic with my response, OP posts a great deal about tournament format and settings on here and I am willing to chip in if he wants to organize something.

What paradox said is correct as well @Giuseppe551 , you don't have to be a well known content creator to host a good event in AoE2. There are events right now with no prizepool that have multiple 2k+ players playing in them so it just comes down to what you're looking for. You might not be able to attract every single top player without a big prizepool but $100 is a start if you'd like to get something going. If the ideas are exciting i'm sure there will be some interest.

 

[paradox303]

Which ones, in which tournaments? KOTD is the last S tier I remember that didn't have a wide variety of maps, map draft, and civ draft.

Are we only talking S tier events? Because that wasn't clear in your initial post at all. Any notable tournaments are all posted on Liquipedia with links to handbooks It's one of the best places to go on a deep dive and look for inspiration.

 

[JayGould]

I'd like to see a true MegaRandom tournament, where you also start the game with different resources (same amount for both players of course). Like 500 wood, 0 food, 200 gold, 300 stone for example. Next game the resources are different.

So you can't prepare build orders. You have to improvise as you go along.