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DracKeNAgreed, thankfully we have action packed Ara to save the day. I'm still surprised there are people repeating this argument when Arabia meta (especially with picked civs) is literally china/maya - full wall by min 8, develop farm eco before commiting into 2nd range and not make fletching before up to castle (which is around min 20 btw). With Islands that argument works even less as the meta is mostly both players going into heavy military production starting early feudal. I understand people might not like water, but you can't say Islands is not an action packed map for 20 mins when there's a good potential the game will be over at 20 mins.
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Thanks to the organizers. Great games during a very concise weekend time. I don't see a reason to complain about check-in or feitorias -- they are rules and are fair to everyone. Fantastic 3 days for viewers.
RoR_xTeRRoRxYou forgot to add arabia to that list
phiupanOr, the "A tier" events would be taken more seriously by the pros if they needed that for a better seed. It seems that "we" care more about seeding than some of the pros which do not take the ladder seriously now and do not take seriously smaller events. For those probably it is fine like this.
By the way, one more argument in favor of recorded games in this tournament: probably the dogao situation could have been solved in a better way if they were playing it as recorded games.
Yo should be the luckiest of all, because he wins everytime in Nomad!
SuperskinnyBLS
If you are taking different game formats like Empire Wars, you forgot DM World Cup 4: Bruh top 6/ ACCM nothing
DM is not even in the ladder anymore, irrelevant game mode.
kOa_MasterI love the format of the seeding & map combination. it doesn't always need to be fancy maps - just the ones we have in the mappool are perfectly fine!
the tournament was great and if there was anything I would've like to have, it's the event being spread over two weekends. it felt like it was a bit too much just friday-sunday to follow all the action and great games.
however big thank you, that was super-exciting and a well deserved winner.
PS: a shame hera didn't make it but I'm sure he's checking-in punctually for the next one
the tournament was great and if there was anything I would've like to have, it's the event being spread over two weekends. it felt like it was a bit too much just friday-sunday to follow all the action and great games.
however big thank you, that was super-exciting and a well deserved winner.
PS: a shame hera didn't make it but I'm sure he's checking-in punctually for the next one
I don't see a single DM player do well in EW/RM while the players who do well in EW tend to do very well in RM as well, it's just not the same thing.
It's like comparing 100/200 m and 5000 m in athletics. You see the same people in 100 and 200 m with sometimes some specialists but overall skills translate well. 5000 m is still the same game (running) but utterly different.
It's like comparing 100/200 m and 5000 m in athletics. You see the same people in 100 and 200 m with sometimes some specialists but overall skills translate well. 5000 m is still the same game (running) but utterly different.
My humble two cents as feedback:
First of all, thanks to the tournament organizers having created a new format of the tournament calendar that has brought much fun and much potential to be an established big name tournament in the future. Your constant work and endeavour has paid of and brought us much joy. However, as it was the first edition you might have already found a lot of things you might improve in the next one. I hopefully can help you a little bit with this with my following words:
Schedule: The biggest issue for me personally: A 128 player tournament being a weekend tournament only. As a viewer, I can maximally see one quarter of all game from ro32 onwards which are the interesting ones due to the need of parallel casting. I cant really say much about the tournament games in general, because the majority of it happened in the background for me. It is a big flagship tournament, why hide it that much. You want it to be an open tournament anyone can participate but then constrain it to the players that are available 3 full days on one weekend.
The schedule needs to be so tight as a consequence, that you need exclude players for any little trouble happening out-of plan, like Hera's check-in miss or Dogao's power problem. And viewership and promotion would also benefit from it, if it goes longer than one weekend. For many aoe2 viewers they may not even noticed what we talk about, if they were busy the weekend and couldnt add one watched second to the tournament.
In RBW Qualifiers parallel casting is ok, since its only a qualifer and the final deciders are consecutive so you can see all of them together as a community. Also they offer two qualifiers, so you are not as constrained as a player to have time for one set weekend to participate. But here the parallel casting goes really deep into the tournament until ro8. Something, I have not experienced in aoe2 yet, and I dont like it. You have a great tournament at your hands, why not show it and make sure it stays in everyone's mind longer than two weeks.
Half of the sets from ro32 to round of 8 were 3-2s and were parallelely cast in the same time. Me as a friend of aoe, knowing all of these players playing there, would have really liked to see all of them before being spoiled in chat.
I know it was your concept, but still I am yet not sure I understood the basic idea behind it.
It also doesnt need to be a 2 month tournament, I thought kotd was a bit too long as well with its 6 weeks, but a tournament of this scope can be 2-4 weeks long, no problem and naturally will take up in prestige just by the fact of it, that we spend time watching it for longer.
Also I believe that level of competitiveness can benefit from it, when you can practice some time for your next matchup, so the sets are a bit less what you naturally can already do, leading to some very clear map wins. One game per day per player, seems for me personally the golden rule I would like to stick to.
Seeding: If you do SE, good seeding is A and O of everything. Now going back to pure ladder seeding feels like a big step backwards, after kotd with chrazini involvement had the best seeding system we had so far. Ladder does not provide any reliant information about a general player performance. A player can just play one map one civ only and get to top 10 on the ladder, or a player plays in a very exotic timezone were he can compete with other players and gets top 2 by small elo gains. And he is never put back to his real elo, because he is never tested to play the other players of the top, cause they dont play ranked at his time.
I know you need a convinient way to seed 128 players, and for many of them ladder is the only way to do so. That is why kotd went to the hybrid method: Coarse seeding with ladder rankings (average of current and max elo achieved), fine-seeding top 16 with recent tournament finishes. I find this system optimal and should become the standard.
Drafting: In the drafting system there could be seen the compromise of two ideas:
- Players should be able to perform whatever they have prepared without much interference from the other player.
- Mirrors should be avoided to have more interesting games.
As a consequence, TOs (as ornlu told me) have decided to go for a draft system without bans.
However, the tournament was coined by having very repetitive civ matchups on its maps.
Arabia: Azt, May, Chi
Land Madness: Mag, Chi, Azt
Watacama: Lith, Japan
Arena: Burgundians, Malay
Islands: Ita, Vik, Por
Nomad: Spa, Mal
Players probably like to have this narrow meta, so they can prepare better, but for viewers, its tiring, especially for a tournament with as many sets.
For me, an idea I have in my mind for longer: How about mixing up the state of the map metas of these long figured out maps - randomly banning 10 civs before every draft. Every draft will be unique, but its both for both players, without carryover to next round (unlike kotd2). Need to adapt and find optimal set of civs for the played maps. Also players after draft get one joker civ, that can be any civ they wish and not have yet.
Unpleasant aoe mechanics: Just ban them. Feitorias or Flemish Rev deciding the game, will just always give a bitter taste to the tournament for a time longer than feitorias or flemish rev might even exist in the game.
Handbook: I think a handbook should have a summary page at front making clear the most incremental parts of the rules. Here, this are the most non-standard rules in this tournament, please be aware, and dont bury those into the normal rule chunk where they might be overread.
First of all, thanks to the tournament organizers having created a new format of the tournament calendar that has brought much fun and much potential to be an established big name tournament in the future. Your constant work and endeavour has paid of and brought us much joy. However, as it was the first edition you might have already found a lot of things you might improve in the next one. I hopefully can help you a little bit with this with my following words:
Schedule: The biggest issue for me personally: A 128 player tournament being a weekend tournament only. As a viewer, I can maximally see one quarter of all game from ro32 onwards which are the interesting ones due to the need of parallel casting. I cant really say much about the tournament games in general, because the majority of it happened in the background for me. It is a big flagship tournament, why hide it that much. You want it to be an open tournament anyone can participate but then constrain it to the players that are available 3 full days on one weekend.
The schedule needs to be so tight as a consequence, that you need exclude players for any little trouble happening out-of plan, like Hera's check-in miss or Dogao's power problem. And viewership and promotion would also benefit from it, if it goes longer than one weekend. For many aoe2 viewers they may not even noticed what we talk about, if they were busy the weekend and couldnt add one watched second to the tournament.
In RBW Qualifiers parallel casting is ok, since its only a qualifer and the final deciders are consecutive so you can see all of them together as a community. Also they offer two qualifiers, so you are not as constrained as a player to have time for one set weekend to participate. But here the parallel casting goes really deep into the tournament until ro8. Something, I have not experienced in aoe2 yet, and I dont like it. You have a great tournament at your hands, why not show it and make sure it stays in everyone's mind longer than two weeks.
Half of the sets from ro32 to round of 8 were 3-2s and were parallelely cast in the same time. Me as a friend of aoe, knowing all of these players playing there, would have really liked to see all of them before being spoiled in chat.
I know it was your concept, but still I am yet not sure I understood the basic idea behind it.
It also doesnt need to be a 2 month tournament, I thought kotd was a bit too long as well with its 6 weeks, but a tournament of this scope can be 2-4 weeks long, no problem and naturally will take up in prestige just by the fact of it, that we spend time watching it for longer.
Also I believe that level of competitiveness can benefit from it, when you can practice some time for your next matchup, so the sets are a bit less what you naturally can already do, leading to some very clear map wins. One game per day per player, seems for me personally the golden rule I would like to stick to.
Seeding: If you do SE, good seeding is A and O of everything. Now going back to pure ladder seeding feels like a big step backwards, after kotd with chrazini involvement had the best seeding system we had so far. Ladder does not provide any reliant information about a general player performance. A player can just play one map one civ only and get to top 10 on the ladder, or a player plays in a very exotic timezone were he can compete with other players and gets top 2 by small elo gains. And he is never put back to his real elo, because he is never tested to play the other players of the top, cause they dont play ranked at his time.
I know you need a convinient way to seed 128 players, and for many of them ladder is the only way to do so. That is why kotd went to the hybrid method: Coarse seeding with ladder rankings (average of current and max elo achieved), fine-seeding top 16 with recent tournament finishes. I find this system optimal and should become the standard.
Drafting: In the drafting system there could be seen the compromise of two ideas:
- Players should be able to perform whatever they have prepared without much interference from the other player.
- Mirrors should be avoided to have more interesting games.
As a consequence, TOs (as ornlu told me) have decided to go for a draft system without bans.
However, the tournament was coined by having very repetitive civ matchups on its maps.
Arabia: Azt, May, Chi
Land Madness: Mag, Chi, Azt
Watacama: Lith, Japan
Arena: Burgundians, Malay
Islands: Ita, Vik, Por
Nomad: Spa, Mal
Players probably like to have this narrow meta, so they can prepare better, but for viewers, its tiring, especially for a tournament with as many sets.
For me, an idea I have in my mind for longer: How about mixing up the state of the map metas of these long figured out maps - randomly banning 10 civs before every draft. Every draft will be unique, but its both for both players, without carryover to next round (unlike kotd2). Need to adapt and find optimal set of civs for the played maps. Also players after draft get one joker civ, that can be any civ they wish and not have yet.
Unpleasant aoe mechanics: Just ban them. Feitorias or Flemish Rev deciding the game, will just always give a bitter taste to the tournament for a time longer than feitorias or flemish rev might even exist in the game.
Handbook: I think a handbook should have a summary page at front making clear the most incremental parts of the rules. Here, this are the most non-standard rules in this tournament, please be aware, and dont bury those into the normal rule chunk where they might be overread.
Stop changing the arguments. First it was S-tier only, then not in the ladder, now not relevant...
Empire wars is a completely different game mode, top players said that when the game came out, and still say. It is only slightly relevant because RedBull threw money at it, otherwise it would disappear, many players say they prefer the normal random map. The top players got good at it because there was money to earn. If they would learn DM, they would be top players there too, after a learning curve (see Viper former DM champion). They just do not play there.
Degaussedthis is applicable to all tournaments, not just TOC, but my biggest issue with tournament casting when we have these big weekend events is that very often streamers cast the same games and it can be hard to find other matches. I would personally love it if there was an agreed upon segregation of games so that people know if they want to watch X vs Y, they go to Z's channel; and if they want to watch A vs B, they go to C's channel. Because at the moment it's C and Z casting the same games.
MusashiGreat tournament!
But it's too much for just three days. Make it two weekends. The first weekend will build hype and the second are all the bigger games.
But it's too much for just three days. Make it two weekends. The first weekend will build hype and the second are all the bigger games.
I think the format suits very well a one weekend event. Every map was almost always played with 2-3 civs (arabia meso vs chinese, arena/hideout combos of burg/turks/britons/malay, island portuguese vs italians, nomad spanish vs malians, atacama japanese vs lithuanians and so on). In a short event like this it's fine, but having 2 weekend of same maps with same match-ups would have been pretty redundant and boring in my opinion.
Fun tournament overall. I do have some sugestions.
First, instead of the stupid time limit wich is a terrible idea in every way. Why not add those trees with 200 wood in them. Or make a mod with trees with 1000 wood. If this doesnt work just remove the **** map.
Players can adapt too, maybe let player ban a civ, change your strategy, land them, etc.
And for players complaining about seeding. Play the goddam ladder so you get a seed that benefits you. If lierey doesnt want to play a potential top 3 seed he will need to play the ladder. But thats his problem, if you dont like accm seed 2 then play the stupid ladder. Maybe admins can force players to play 30 ladders games or something. I dont care to see lierey vs hera round of 64, but this is a solution for crybabies.
First, instead of the stupid time limit wich is a terrible idea in every way. Why not add those trees with 200 wood in them. Or make a mod with trees with 1000 wood. If this doesnt work just remove the **** map.
Players can adapt too, maybe let player ban a civ, change your strategy, land them, etc.
And for players complaining about seeding. Play the goddam ladder so you get a seed that benefits you. If lierey doesnt want to play a potential top 3 seed he will need to play the ladder. But thats his problem, if you dont like accm seed 2 then play the stupid ladder. Maybe admins can force players to play 30 ladders games or something. I dont care to see lierey vs hera round of 64, but this is a solution for crybabies.
& @RoR_xTeRRoRx , I was expecting to have a clown reaction and you guys are right. Arabia games were disapointed as well. But this is due to the arabia version choosed for the tournament. The TOC arabia was too close. IMO, all arabia in tournament should look like KOTD arabia. I cannot understand why other tournament organizer let that beautiful map in the locker and rather use a 1100 arabia map.
Island provided funny fight but also unfair map. see Viper / Yo with Viper having gold mine on the same side of his island. The first minutes are still boring.
Yeah just start playing nile delta 1v1 fixed civ only to increase your rating...
I agree with most of the common feedback, but I want to call out a few specifics.
First, I have long been calling for third place games and am very happy one was included here. Great addition. Personally I'd like to see it as a bo5 at least to not take anything away from the importance. And I 100% agree that the long days tend to take some of the hype out of the end of them. I think a final day with an opener 3rd place game followed by a finals would be amazing.
Second, going along with the above, I understand the concept was to make this a weekend tournament but I'd love things spread out a bit more. Maybe have seeds bottom half of bracket compete in qualifiers on Thursday or prior weekend, or 2 qualifier RBW format. I simply find that too many of the early round games are not competitive and it almost feels like a waste of a day. In addition there are definitely times when we do get to the competitive games and there is no cast of a particularly interesting set. Whenever there are multiple games occurring at once I'm a big fan of open streaming as at least then there are more chances that all the different series will get some coverage. If that can be coordinated to cover them all, then even better. I also often try to catch up on vods if I miss a good series because I was busy IRL, this felt very tough this tournament partly because it was so rushed and partly because I didn't know who was streaming what. Maybe an unpopular opinion, but when the games get down to one series at a time, the semi finals and finals etc, I strongly prefer closed streaming with a central hub. The convergence of all the various fans from different streams adds to the hype, and I'm also a sucker for any production adding recaps, analysis etc that I found sorely lacking in this tournament (again I realize kind of by design, but I still missed it).
Last, I didn't necessarily have any huge issues with seeding in this tournament, from what I can tell there was a rule, and it was followed without compromise. What continues to surprise me is that the tournament scene as a whole continues with a lack of standard seeding, every tournament doing something slightly different. Would be absolutely amazing, for there to be some sort of pro league to handle this, or at least acknowledging that would be very hard to pull off well, some sort of standard agreed upon by a majority of pros and organizers that will be consistently used going forward.
To summarize my thoughts, I think this tournament did accomplish the main goals it set out to. The format seemed designed to be a 'for the players by the players' format and it kind of came off that way. As a viewer I just wasn't as invested in it as many other big tournaments. The long days and lack of a hub stream with production, an unfortunate (but handled correctly) situation with a big name missing, and not being able to see every series cast that I wanted to contributed to a still enjoyable but overall mediocre viewing experience for me.
First, I have long been calling for third place games and am very happy one was included here. Great addition. Personally I'd like to see it as a bo5 at least to not take anything away from the importance. And I 100% agree that the long days tend to take some of the hype out of the end of them. I think a final day with an opener 3rd place game followed by a finals would be amazing.
Second, going along with the above, I understand the concept was to make this a weekend tournament but I'd love things spread out a bit more. Maybe have seeds bottom half of bracket compete in qualifiers on Thursday or prior weekend, or 2 qualifier RBW format. I simply find that too many of the early round games are not competitive and it almost feels like a waste of a day. In addition there are definitely times when we do get to the competitive games and there is no cast of a particularly interesting set. Whenever there are multiple games occurring at once I'm a big fan of open streaming as at least then there are more chances that all the different series will get some coverage. If that can be coordinated to cover them all, then even better. I also often try to catch up on vods if I miss a good series because I was busy IRL, this felt very tough this tournament partly because it was so rushed and partly because I didn't know who was streaming what. Maybe an unpopular opinion, but when the games get down to one series at a time, the semi finals and finals etc, I strongly prefer closed streaming with a central hub. The convergence of all the various fans from different streams adds to the hype, and I'm also a sucker for any production adding recaps, analysis etc that I found sorely lacking in this tournament (again I realize kind of by design, but I still missed it).
Last, I didn't necessarily have any huge issues with seeding in this tournament, from what I can tell there was a rule, and it was followed without compromise. What continues to surprise me is that the tournament scene as a whole continues with a lack of standard seeding, every tournament doing something slightly different. Would be absolutely amazing, for there to be some sort of pro league to handle this, or at least acknowledging that would be very hard to pull off well, some sort of standard agreed upon by a majority of pros and organizers that will be consistently used going forward.
To summarize my thoughts, I think this tournament did accomplish the main goals it set out to. The format seemed designed to be a 'for the players by the players' format and it kind of came off that way. As a viewer I just wasn't as invested in it as many other big tournaments. The long days and lack of a hub stream with production, an unfortunate (but handled correctly) situation with a big name missing, and not being able to see every series cast that I wanted to contributed to a still enjoyable but overall mediocre viewing experience for me.
MuscleChampI loved the tournament, also the long days stacked with matches is just great imo.
But regarding feitorias, damn this is so dumb, its part of portuguese civ (even tho it should be removed maybe), and now we have to design maps/settings in a way to make them useless.
I propose either banning feitorias or just accepting the fact that its now (a dumb) part of the game.
Timelimit on islands may be a good idea regardless because of wood, but limiting it to reduce feitoria effect to zero is something I dont like. ( It didnt work but this was the goal)
But regarding feitorias, damn this is so dumb, its part of portuguese civ (even tho it should be removed maybe), and now we have to design maps/settings in a way to make them useless.
I propose either banning feitorias or just accepting the fact that its now (a dumb) part of the game.
Timelimit on islands may be a good idea regardless because of wood, but limiting it to reduce feitoria effect to zero is something I dont like. ( It didnt work but this was the goal)
I agree with the people above that spreading this event over two weeks would be better. I like the simultaneous games for early rounds, but I think the quarter finals at the very least should all be casted in a row, as the level is just too high. This is the case for Red Bull Qualifiers as well, where the matches are in theory less interesting due to the top 8 being invited to the Main Event.
Regarding the seeding, I think pretty much everything has been said already, there's no reason to use ladder rating for the top players, if you want 0 effort you can use the aoe-elo rating, but it would be even better to use something similar to the system in KotD3.
I didn't really like the 3rd place match. I get that you need a break between the second semifinal and the final, but I think the system where the semi's are played simultaneously and one of them is casted live is much better. It also made the final day a bit too long imo and I don't think it adds much as I don't think players care much about that match.
I'm not sure how to fix feitoria's on Islands. I don't think the problem lies with the map as some do, the map was perfectly fine for over 15 years and only with Portuguese becoming dominant became a map where you're trying not to lose instead of trying to win. Ideally it would be fixed by the devs removing or reworking the feitoria, but until then it's probably good to ban feitoria's. I don't think time limits are very fun, I think it's just as anticlimactic if Yo is turning the tide but Liereyy wins due to the time limit. Adding more wood on the map might work as well, but it will also punish map control, as Yo would've still got wood on the left side of his island in his final game and Liereyy would've had a harder time winning by denying the wood on the right side of the island.
Regarding the seeding, I think pretty much everything has been said already, there's no reason to use ladder rating for the top players, if you want 0 effort you can use the aoe-elo rating, but it would be even better to use something similar to the system in KotD3.
I didn't really like the 3rd place match. I get that you need a break between the second semifinal and the final, but I think the system where the semi's are played simultaneously and one of them is casted live is much better. It also made the final day a bit too long imo and I don't think it adds much as I don't think players care much about that match.
I'm not sure how to fix feitoria's on Islands. I don't think the problem lies with the map as some do, the map was perfectly fine for over 15 years and only with Portuguese becoming dominant became a map where you're trying not to lose instead of trying to win. Ideally it would be fixed by the devs removing or reworking the feitoria, but until then it's probably good to ban feitoria's. I don't think time limits are very fun, I think it's just as anticlimactic if Yo is turning the tide but Liereyy wins due to the time limit. Adding more wood on the map might work as well, but it will also punish map control, as Yo would've still got wood on the left side of his island in his final game and Liereyy would've had a harder time winning by denying the wood on the right side of the island.
IRC_tomateWe need a civ that counters portu feitorias in the islands scenario, same as for aztecs in arabia (vikings do pretty well)
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