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!

 

The streaming policy of the competition feels like they don't even want it to be watched.

 

ACCM's bracket is the funniest thing I've seen in some time. I don't care how likeable the guy is, he should not be the best player in a qualifying bracket that leads to an 8 player event. Especially when a bracket of Viper/Jordan/Dogao exists.

I think it's Aoe tournament elo throwing things off here. That needs to be thrown into the trash heap, it ranks ACCM 5th even though he's had like two top 8 results in his life lol

ACCM last 2 years in S-tier only. Sure only 2 top 8 results. You just missed how good ACCM got during the last two years. Valas and Kingstone got also good results in smaller tournaments + TTL: Gold League + qualifying for RBW:L. But yeah, that bracket seems a bit weaker compared to the rest.

 

Fair enough, that's more top 8s than I would have expected. Doesn't change the fact that he shouldn't be the top seed in that bracket when there are objectively better players who are the #2 seeds in other brackets.

 

Fair enough, that's more top 8s than I would have expected. Doesn't change the fact that he shouldn't be the top seed in that bracket when there are objectively better players who are the #2 seeds in other brackets.

"I can't recall 80% of the tournaments results used by the stats, but if the stats tell me something different from my first impression, the stats must be wrong"

 

"I can't recall 80% of the tournaments results used by the stats, but if the stats tell me something different from my first impression, the stats must be wrong"

Jordan and Daut have better results in the last 2 years objectively speaking. MBL and Nocov at least have comparable results, if not better.
These 4 players are no2 favs in their brackets.

Maybe you should check your stats first before sounding oversmart

 

Everything feels so odd, we have here this great pricepool and the legendary dreamhack of esl behind it (Dreamhack is a name for me that follows my whole esports life and guaranteed always to deliver some great esports events)
The late announcement, the akward qualifier, like qualifiers are part of the tournament too and they should make the viewer hungry so he want to see more, cover it better.
We have alot of great series and the casters mostly cast the same sets. There is this hugh ass tournament and the three greatest AoE caster personalities Memb,Nili and T90 are not part of it, feels strange to me.
I hope this feeling won't drag on the whole tournament.
And the brackets yeah - first I thought KingStone could give ACCM a battle and there we have vivi and valas but yet it seems very unbalanced.

 

Jordan and Daut have better results in the last 2 years objectively speaking. MBL and Nocov at least have comparable results, if not better.
These 4 players are no2 favs in their brackets.

Maybe you should check your stats first before sounding oversmart

Referencing mental rankings in your head and claiming "objective" is a cruel joke.

If you have an issue with how the AoE2 tournament elo formula is calculated (as many do), go ahead and point it out - discuss, debate, change how it's calculated - preferably ex ante. Is the formula maybe putting too much weight on the last 1 year of tournaments over those in the 1-3 year range (where Jordan and Daut would have done much better)? Maybe. Discuss that and perhaps we can agree on a better formula before the next seeding has to be done.

So far all I hear is whining from people after results are calculated, that the results don't match their very human first impression of who their favored players are. And voila, it just happens that the complaining from a forum dominated by primarily English speakers happens to favor Western streamers over a dude from SE Asia.

 

Referencing mental rankings in your head and claiming "objective" is a cruel joke.

My guy, go compare Jordan and ACCM's results for the past two years side by side. It is objective whether you want it to be or not: Jordan has way better results. I can't be bothered to look up MBl or Daut, probably the same thing though.

 

My guy, go compare Jordan and ACCM's results for the past two years side by side. It is objective whether you want it to be or not: Jordan has way better results. I can't be bothered to look up MBl or Daut, probably the same thing though.

That's exactly what elo ratings do: compare tournament results side by side.

The difference between an elo rating, and your whining, is that the elo rating actually has data input from all S-tier tournaments on Liquipedia, and uses a transparent formula to compile it into a quantitative figure that you and I can reference. Whereas you, Giuseppe551 of Aoezone, admittedly don't "remember" most tournament results ("Fair enough, that's more top 8s than I would have expected.") and you mentally digest those few that you remember, then verbally provides me a statement of who's the better player, which you expect me to take at face value as a "more objective" standard for seeding.

 

Referencing mental rankings in your head and claiming "objective" is a cruel joke.

If you have an issue with how the AoE2 tournament elo formula is calculated (as many do), go ahead and point it out - discuss, debate, change how it's calculated - preferably ex ante. Is the formula maybe putting too much weight on the last 1 year of tournaments over those in the 1-3 year range (where Jordan and Daut would have done much better)? Maybe. Discuss that and perhaps we can agree on a better formula before the next seeding has to be done.

So far all I hear is whining from people after results are calculated, that the results don't match their very human first impression of who their favored players are. And voila, it just happens that the complaining from a forum dominated by English and ESL speakers happens to favor Western streamers over a dude from SE Asia. Sorry, you don't get to change the equation just to disfavor a Vietnamese player that you don't follow. That's the definition of not being objective.

Lol now acting as if even any form of objective analysis for rating players don't exist 11. Just go compare the results of Daut and Jordan over the last 2 years my guy. It's right in your face
You first tried to act oversmart without giving any counters, now whining when your clown attitude got called out. KEK.

Pretty much everyone here thinks the seedings for this tourney was an absolute disaster, for a reason.
Now doing the usual "when everything fails, blame the westerners and english speakers". Hilarious, your name is very fitting for you

You don't need from western countries to recognize that the seedings are wack, see the flag at my profile pic??

 

Lol now acting as if even any form of objective analysis for rating players don't exist 11. Just go compare the results of Daut and Jordan over the last 2 years my guy. It's right in your face
You first tried to act oversmart without giving any counters, now whining when your clown attitude got called out. KEK

Pretty much everyone here thinks the seedings for this tourney was an absolute disaster, for a reason.
Now doing the usual "when everything fails, blame the westerners and english speakers". Hilarious.

You don't need from western countries to recognize that the seedings are wack, see the flag at my profile pic??

If you're going to bring up your national affiliation as a shield for bigotry, do you need a reminder that the best AOE2 player from your country recently disparaged a Vietnamese player for not speaking English?

 

If you're going to bring up your national affiliation as a shield for bigotry, do you need a reminder that the best AOE2 player from your country recently disparaged a Vietnamese player for not speaking English?

What are any of this accusations based on 11?

Keep revealing yourself as the absolute clown you are.

 

If you're going to bring up your national affiliation as a shield for bigotry, do you need a reminder that the best AOE2 player from your country recently disparaged a Vietnamese player for not speaking English?

dragonstar said "learn english" in response to hoang's "YOU SAY LIKE A DOG." hardly "disparaging a vietnamese player for not speaking english" lmao

 

Honestly the biggest issue isn’t even that ACCM is a #1 seed. It’s that another top 10 player (Daut, Jordan, or MbL) isn’t the #2 seed in that bracket.

 

Stats since 2021, for S tier, for Daut:
1 win
2 finals
1 semi
8 quarters
3 pos 9-12
1 pos13-16


Literally just one 13-16 in the last two years, for S tier tournaments. He is a consistent top 8 player, who has recently been out of form for last 3-4 months and is still top 12 at his worst form.

The dude is seed 14 for this tourney lol.
Nothing wrong with this folks, that seeding is very objective and people here are biased against Vietnamese for some reason. LMFAO


You want me to pull up the stats for Jordan and MBL as well? I can do that as well 11

 

Honestly the biggest issue isn’t even that ACCM is a #1 seed. It’s that another top 10 player (Daut, Jordan, or MbL) isn’t the #2 seed in that bracket.

Valas is the second seed in that bracket, from being #12 in elo, a few points ahead of Daut.

Valas doesn't stream or have a fanbase, so I'm guessing a few people here are going to "forget" how many top 8 and top 16 finishes in S-tier tournaments he has had this year. That's fine. There's a reason pros mutually agreed to be seeded by elo, and not by the "objective impressions" of casuals on AOEzone.

 

Stats since 2021, for S tier, for Daut:
1 win
2 finals
1 semi
8 quarters
3 pos 9-12
1 pos13-16


Literally just one 13-16 in the last two years, for S tier tournaments. He is a consistent top 8 player, who has recently been out of form for last 3-4 months and is still top 12 at his worst form.

The dude is seed 14 for this tourney lol.
Nothing wrong with this folks, that seeding is very objective and people here are biased against Vietnamese for some reason. LMFAO


You want me to pull up the stats for Jordan and MBL as well? I can do that as well 11

"pull up the stats" is literally what an Elo rating does, except, again, the Elo metric does it in a systematic way with a transparent formula, whereas you're copy-and-pasting one page of results, at a time, to a public forum to whine, without providing any alternative metric, after realizing that the present metric doesn't give you the preferred ranking you already made in your head beforehand. In quant circles, they call that bludgeoning the stats until it tells you what you want to hear.

 

"pulling up the stats" is literally what an elo rating does, except, again, the elo metric does it in a systematic and comprehensive way, whereas you're copy-and-pasting one page of results a time to a public forum to whine after realizing the metric doesn't give you the preferred ranking you already had in your head beforehand.

just took a look at the tournament elo leaderboards, whoever decided to use this thing for seeding must be completely clueless. There's a player in the top 16 who has 1 top 16 S tier tournament appearance in his life. It's clearly biased towards players participating in A, B, and C tier tournaments where many of the top players dont even play.

 

"pull up the stats" is literally what an Elo rating does, except, again, the Elo metric does it in a systematic way with a transparent formula, whereas you're copy-and-pasting one page of results, at a time, to a public forum to whine, without providing any alternative metric, after realizing that the present metric doesn't give you the preferred ranking you already made in your head beforehand. In quant circles, they call that bludgeoning the stats until it tells you what you want to hear.

You are clearly incapable of making any arguments and default to authority.
For once, use your brain and make an original argument, or just stop.


Daut's worst performance in S tier tourneys in the last two years is a single 13-16 position. And he's seed number 14 KEKW.
Anyone thinking this is an accurate seeding for Daut is low IQ or delusional to put it simply


Same for Jordan, who is also like seed 13 or 15. While his performance in S tier tourneys say a completely different story.

 

just took a look at the tournament elo leaderboards, whoever decided to use this thing for seeding must be completely clueless. There's a player in the top 16 who has 1 top 16 S tier tournament appearance in his life. It's clearly biased towards players participating in A, B, and C tier tournaments where many of the top players dont even play.

This is a legitimate issue, but Elo mitigates it in a way that's not intuitive.

Let's say ACCM plays Double Cup 3 (B-tier) and racks up a series of wins against lower-level players with +3/+4 elo each. His elo is "inflated" from 2300 to 2334, whereas Daut who didn't participate in Double Cup is stuck at 2238.

Then they meet each other in the next S-tier tournament. With the now ~100 point gap, if Daut wins, he gets a massive 13-16 elo boost from winning one series against ACCM alone, simply because the result goes against the prediction of the elo system, dramatically. The rating would quickly converge, and in effect Daut gets a ton of free points from ACCM's previous effort at "grinding" lower-tier tournaments.

That match-up did happen recently, in Warlords (S-tier), but ACCM won convincingly (3-1).

So again, I do think the quality of the tournaments in the data is an issue, but in the medium-to-long run, the elo system helps even it out. The fact that ACCM is ranked so high isn't just from grinding lower-level tournaments. He has to consistently beat top 10 pros in their 1-to-1 matchups to keep his rating, and he's doing it.

 

I heard following in the twitch chad "Lyx was waiting for Yo to finish his game to translate for him. But FIre just claimed the win" - is that correct? Sounds terrible and very unmannerd. usually i thought aoe scene is very mannerd and fair? who decided that?

It is unfortunate. But as far as I know F1Re waited for more than 30 minutes to get a response from Yo. So it is not the nicest solution, but if the rules say that you only have to wait 15 minutes, F1Re did act according to the rules.

 

It is unfortunate. But as far as I know F1Re waited for more than 30 minutes to get a response from Yo. So it is not the nicest solution, but if the rules say that you only have to wait 15 minutes, F1Re did act according to the rules.

i don't think "more than 30 minutes", according to twitch"Lyx was waiting for Yo to finish his game to translate for him" . i went back to check Yo's game, the game last 36 mins(in game time), in real time it's 21 mins. So, actually it's less than 21 mins.

 

The seeding seems weird. The fact that brackets like Yo, MBL, Capoch and Viper, Jordan, Dogao exist when in another bracket it's literally just ACCM vs Valas is just not right. ACCM is good but he's not in the top 6 (even when you exclude Tatoh and Liereyy). Valas is also not as good as Capoch or Dogao, yet ends up being the #2 in his bracket.

 

Valas is the second seed in that bracket, from being #12 in elo, a few points ahead of Daut.

Valas doesn't stream or have a fanbase, so I'm guessing a few people here are going to "forget" how many top 8 and top 16 finishes in S-tier tournaments he has had this year. That's fine. There's a reason pros mutually agreed to be seeded by elo, and not by the "objective impressions" of casuals on AOEzone.

“pEoPlE fOrGeT hOw MaNy ToP 8 aNd ToP 16 fInIsHeS vAlAs HaS hAd ThIS yEaR”

Objective reality:

There have been 7 S-Tier 1v1 tournaments in the past year. Here are the results over the past year of Daut and Valas:

Daut: top 16 in all 7, top 12 in 6, top 8 in 3, and made the finals of 1.

Valas: top 16 in 4 of 7, top 12 in 1 of 7. He did not make a single quarterfinal. He failed to qualify in RMS Cup 2, The Resurgance, and KOTD4.

Please tell me more about how anyone that disagrees with you is a casual who doesn’t know about actual tournament results.

 

Can someone remind me why the old method of player seedings of the top players being done by the top players themselves was retired? I felt it was a quite good method overall.. especially when compared to the other attempts at grading players.