The Grand Melee - Announcement and Discussion

Some time ago, the secretive Order of the Sheep teased us The Grand Melee, an Age of Empires II: DE happening in Hannover at the DreamHack LAN event, from the 15th to the 17th of December.

We are now happy to deliver the full message to you.

Settings specifics
The whole event will be played using the DWL game mode, also known as 9 villagers start game mode. It will allow for quicker action, while keeping the openness and strategic diversity of the standard RM mode.

Main event
The Grand Melee main event will consist of a single elimination bracket, featuring a total of 8 players.
15th of December
Quarter finals best of 5
16th of December
Semi finals best of 7
17th of December
Third place match best of 7 and Grand final best of 9

Participation
Firstly, as per their performance in the RedBull Wololo: Legacy tournament, Liereyy and TaToH has been granted an invitation to the main event.

Secondly, the other 6 participants will have to come on top of the entirely open qualifiers happening on the 3rd and 4th of December. The registration is already open and you can sign up here on start.gg

Prize money reward
The monetary reward will amount to a whopping $100,000 split between the 8 main event players as followed:

1st place: $40,000
2nd place: $20,000
3rd place: $14,000
4th place: $10,000
5th to 8th: $4,000

Where to watch?
The whole event will be streamed on Twitch at: https://www.twitch.tv/theorderofthesheep

On top of that, the qualifiers will be completely open to broadcast, so you can catch them live at your favourite streamer’s channel on the 3rd and 4th of December!

Details for the broadcasting policy of the main event will be announced soon. Stay tuned...

Join the Discord server now!
Chat with us and get all the latest updates regarding The Grand Melee at https://discord.gg/vT9NWJJtp5

You can also use this announcement thread to discuss about the tournament and to send your questions and feedback.

See you soon!

 

Hello,

Do we know why the monetary distribution is so restricted?
Why not have a budget for the qualifiers?

 

It's the host's choice, I can't really tell you more than that. All I can say is that feedback is appreciated and always transmitted including in regards to prize money distribution.

Keep in mind that there is also a 5000€ community tournament sponsored by The Order of the Sheep running in parallel to the main event at the DreamHack LAN, where everyone is welcome to participate.

 

Closed streaming.. strong

 

Closed streaming, announced on such short notice that several players will struggle to get there even if they qualify, one single elimination qualifier, main even single elim as well, unusually top heavy prize pool, inexplicable best of 7 3rd place match which no one is ever excited to play. Maybe the "Order of the Sheep" is so secretive because they don't want us to know who's responsible for these settings.

 

40 000 for 1st place, 0 for "9th" place. Sad world we live in.

 

open streaming the qualifiers so we promote it but then close streaming the main event, make sense to me.

I guess free weekends after doing so much for this community is not that bad at all.

Also DWL mode but Warlords settings not even mentioning i wonder who is behind the scenes that ignore completly a 30k event with same settings but mention DWL.

Yes i rage and cry but sorry, yeah this announcement made me frustrated and disappointed with whoever is behind this, also 100k for 8 players is also really bad.

 

3 weeks notice for a LAN seems kinda tight, it takes 3 weeks for a civil servant to get the necessary paperwork to take a **** so I can't see anyone getting visas in that time

 

Also DWL mode but Warlords settings not even mentioning i wonder who is behind the scenes that ignore completly a 30k event with same settings but mention DWL.

I can't say anything for the rest besides I'm forwarding your feedback, because none of it is my decision, but regarding calling it DWL mode, in which I have a part.

- DWL are the one who worked on and implemented the 9 vil start idea first, so all credit goes to them for that.
- Besides the similar 9 villagers start, the settings are actually different between Warlords and DWL regarding starting and natural resources balance, and the settings we chose for The Grand Melee are basically identical to those of DWL.

I'm sure Warlords is and will be talked about in the coming weeks and for years to come, for being the first S tier event to ever feature a 9 villager start similar to the DWL mode.

 

Being involved with certain events I usually resist posting or publicly criticizing otter people organizing such events. Still, there are certain things I do not understand. Most of them mentioned already (prize distribution, closed streaming). But on a larger scale, I can`t comprehend the secrecy behind this project. Who are the "Order of the sheep" and what is their goal with this project? Perhaps this would explain the choices. It seems we have last-moment assigned admins with limited or no influence in the decision-making process who learn things a little before the community and have to deal with the criticism.

On a personal level, I am a little disappointed to see two slots given to RBWL finalists, and no slot or mention of a tournament ran the previous weeks with pretty much the same settings. Of course, this is not really important and indeed an organizer's choice. Yet my view is that for the development of the competitive scene organizers should lean on each other's experience. In the same regard closed streaming and such prize distribution are not moves in a good direction.

 

Closed streaming, announced on such short notice that several players will struggle to get there even if they qualify, one single elimination qualifier, main even single elim as well, unusually top heavy prize pool, inexplicable best of 7 3rd place match which no one is ever excited to play. Maybe the "Order of the Sheep" is so secretive because they don't want us to know who's responsible for these settings.

3rd place match is for additional 4000$, a Bo7 makes totally sense.

 

First and foremost, let me start with something positive. I think it's amazing we are having another LAN tournament and with a 100k prizepool, is pretty amazing! I really do hope the event is massive success. That being said there are some questions surrounding the event.

• Who is The Order of The Sheep? - people would notice that the discord staff are largely made up of GL staff members, is it GL?
• Why such a quick turnaround? A LAN tournament takes a lot of preparation, for admins, hosts, players and people that want to travel. The extremely short timeframe is likely going to add complications. Could this have been done next year with an appropriate amount of time for planning post-announcement.
• Payout of prize - Why only top 8? It's 100k, a massive prize. Sponsor can of course choose what they want, but I feel this prize distribution could be handled better and have a much better net positive for the AoE community and for the development of the scene.
• Sponsor - Who is the sponsor?
• Open/Closed streaming? With the rest yet TBC, I can only hope that the whole event is open streaming, closed streaming would be a big step back for AoE and something I think most can agree on

 

Thanks to @siestes for the mentioning us and recognised the hard work and resources we invested sinde 2020. The idea os DWL and DW game mode was to bring more excitement without losing the essence of RM. I am glad that S tier tournaments are implementing the DW game mode or variants. I believe our game mode is still the best (what I am going to say? ) number of vills, resources, map pool and time limit, it really is a great recipe for success. I am so happy that this discussion is take place and the support from @MembTV and @siestes.

 

This sounds like long-awaited GL LAN tournament.

All these secrecy might be marketing trick: Let me repeat a Turkish joke, for a perfect story, you need 4 elements, mystery, nobility, sex and religion.
Order of sheeps (nobility checked) arranges a secret(mystery is checked) LAN (GL members are there, means Lord is there (Religion is checked)).

Now we need sex.

 

This sounds like long-awaited GL LAN tournament.

All these secrecy might be marketing trick: Let me repeat a Turkish joke, for a perfect story, you need 4 elements, mystery, nobility, sex and religion.
Order of sheeps (nobility checked) arranges a secret(mystery is checked) LAN (GL members are there, means Lord is there (Religion is checked)).

Now we need sex.

It is possible that players who failed in the last round of qualifying, feel the last element :Kappa:

 

This sounds like long-awaited GL LAN tournament.

All these secrecy might be marketing trick: Let me repeat a Turkish joke, for a perfect story, you need 4 elements, mystery, nobility, sex and religion.
Order of sheeps (nobility checked) arranges a secret(mystery is checked) LAN (GL members are there, means Lord is there (Religion is checked)).

Now we need sex.

@fengxin

 

open streaming the qualifiers so we promote it but then close streaming the main event, make sense to me.

I guess free weekends after doing so much for this community is not that bad at all.

Also DWL mode but Warlords settings not even mentioning i wonder who is behind the scenes that ignore completly a 30k event with same settings but mention DWL.

Yes i rage and cry but sorry, yeah this announcement made me frustrated and disappointed with whoever is behind this, also 100k for 8 players is also really bad.

Don't forget seeding not based in ATP with S Tier Tournaments, why do we even have ATP I wonder

 

If it's sponsored by Microsoft most of the criticism makes sense. If it's privately funded, it's their money their rules.

 

Don't forget seeding not based in ATP with S Tier Tournaments, why do we even have ATP I wonder

ATP is just a spreadsheet that Robo made, it's just one man's opinion of what good seeding looks like
Memb uses his own version of S-tier performance with weighting, etc. etc.
To each their own

 

If it's sponsored by Microsoft most of the criticism makes sense. If it's privately funded, it's their money their rules.

MS/WE.

Amused the bother with avoiding saying it. Registration on start.gg, that a sponsor would not want it publicized, et al. The discord admin's. Mr. Yo's slip of the tongue and how he would know about it...

Probably read between the lines from certain casters as to why/what conflict of interests exist(s/ed).

Closed streaming, short notice for a LAN in Germany, payout scale in what it takes in time to qualify do seem like fair gripes.

I can only guess who the casters will be. :D

 

ATP is just a spreadsheet that Robo made, it's just one man's opinion of what good seeding looks like
Memb uses his own version of S-tier performance with weighting, etc. etc.
To each their own

Seeding based on ATP Tier S Tournaments and Memb seeding for Warlords was widely accepted.

Now, do you think Viper being seed #7, Daut #14, Jordan #13 is correct?

 

Seeding based on ATP Tier S Tournaments and Memb seeding for Warlords was widely accepted.

Now, do you think Viper being seed #7, Daut #14, Jordan #13 is correct?

You'll always find individual examples where the placement doesn't fit so that doesn't really matter but to answer your specific points: Viper is now #5, which means he would be #3 in the qualifier. Doesn't seem far off, I'd probably put him on #2. As for DauT and JorDan: They are in bad shape so I'd probably see them on #10 and #11 overall. Now #13 and #14 are not much further away than #8 and #9 as in ATP S-tier.

Not too long ago the aoe-elo ladder looked much better than ATP ranking to me. Now ATP looks arguably a bit more precise but you can still find bad examples, e.g. Hera on #7 seems too low. It's also worth noting that any S-Tier ranking loses relevance very quickly if you go down the ladder so S-tier ATP ranking is not a good way for seeding players below top 20.

 

As happy as I am so see so much activity in aoe2, I can't help but feel disappointed in this announcement. This will sound obvious but the very short notice is really bad given that it will very likely exclude Chinese/Vietnamese/Russian players from the tournament completely (unless Yo's and accm's visa weren't just for 1 trip in October). All our Asian players will suffer from this because most of SA/NA don't need a visa to travel to Germany.

In my personal case I had a flight to Argentina on the 26th which now will need to be changed and it will cost me hundreds (or $1000+ if I cant rebook multiple times and I just lose the flight.) Other players have work and need to know in advance to ask for time off, MBL, Dogao, Daniel, etc. People travel in December, you can't just randomly say hello we are hosting a 100k LAN in Germany in 2 weeks, enjoy!

The prize pool distribution is terrible for our community. Surely the players who perform the best deserve the highest prizes, we can agree on that. The highest, not ALL of it. In the last few years the competition has become insane and you have new faces making it to the top 16-32 quite regularly. The fact that there are no prizes at all in the qualifiers with only the top 8 qualifying is straight up ridiculous. And this goes to Red Bull as well, whose last round in the qualifiers was the difference between earning 4k USD or ZERO. I thought that would be the only case but now I see another LAN tournament with the same problem and it becomes quite a concern, especially after losing $4k+ in prize from Red Bull after a brief infection with Covid. As a streamer and player, we get no paid sick time, no paid time off, and now not even the information necessary to plan our schedules and time off during the holidays. Its hard making a living this way, and doubly so if you are not a native English speaker.

You might think that such distribution encourages people to tryhard even more. It will, until they fail a couple times then realize it's not worth investing the time in competing and eventually quit. Like I said, my flight will cost me hundreds and it has messed up all my plans for December, but if I don't participate I miss out on thousands of potential income. If I lose in the very last round of the qualifiers I simply walk away with nothing on top of losing some money. After having that happen to me at Red Bull, it would be heartbreaking to experience this again.

I know that at the end of the day its the sponsors/tournament hosts' choice and if they want to give 100% of the prize to the champion and announce the tournament 3 days before they are in their right to do so, even if it sucks for everyone. But hopefully the feedback from the community can help them realize how bad this is for the scene.

 

Now, do you think Viper being seed #7, Daut #14, Jordan #13 is correct?

13 seems high for Jordan

 

i dont get why they do LAN tournaments even. It just causes many problems for players from all over the world, it makes flights necesary which damage the environment, costs thousands of dollars which can be spend to the prizepool and for the viewership it is not much difference at all.

Just stick to Online Games and dont cause that much problems