Wandering Warriors Cup Seeding

[Comet777]

Anyone else find the seeding and subsequent draw for the Wandering Warriors Cup to be a little off.

If you look at the 4 brackets of the draw:
- First bracket has 4 widely held top 4 players (Daut, Villese, Jordan, and Liereyy), with two who are seen as current top 5 (Jordan and Liereyy)
- Second bracket has 2 top 10 (ACCM and Vinchester), and Capoch hovering around the top 10 too.
- Fourth has 3 top 10, all of whom are commonly seen as top 5 (Viper, Hera, and Yo).

That leaves the third bracket, and just Tatoh who is commonly seen as top 10 among these players. Don't get me wrong, Sitaux, BadBoy and Project Belgium are outstanding players, however the only one of those three who could been seen as hovering close to the top 10 at the moment is Sitaux, and BadBoy bet him fairly comfortably. Although BadBoy has improved out of site in the last 6-9 months!

It just confuses me how the fourth bracket has 3 of the very top players, and the first bracket similar with the other 2. Jordan being drawn with Liereyy (who is a toss up for number 1 or 2 in the world at the moment), despite a host of top 3 results for Jordan himself, seems rough. Whereas, comparatively, Tatoh (and even ACCM or Vince) get much easier runs to the semis. To only have the chance for one of Yo, Viper, and Hera in the semis is a bit disappointing, and I know Hera and Yo haven't been at their best but they have still be performing consistently at a top 5-8 level.

The seeding doesn't make a lot of sense to me personally. Does anyone know where the seeding for this tournament was done from?

 

[chrummi]

There is a thread for the rules & settings:

Seeding
1. All players are seeded based on a combination of their highest-achieved and current 1v1 random map
rating.
a. Ratings are fetched from the ranked leaderboards. If a player is not on the leaderboard, they may
be seeded incorrectly.
b. Players ratings will be taken from the account they register with; however, the tournament
administration retains the right to seed players using alternative accounts.
c. Seeding is performed and locked one hour after the registration deadline.

 

[XDDXOXO]

Please do not start another seeding discussion. Players should read the handbooks and if they would have wanted to get a better seeding they would have grinded the ladder.

The complete seeding is on Liquipedia.

Seeding

 

[Shakal]

Players should read the handbooks and if they would have wanted to get a better seeding they would have grinded the ladder.

Except it doesn't work that way. If other players are seeded badly, one player doesn't necessarily get better matchups by improving his own seed. Villese did grind ladder, he got seed one, and in Ro16 he was matched against seed 17 (Daut) who was actually top 10 player. And if he managed to win, he would meet Liereyy with seed 9 even though Liereyy is top 2.

Seeding by ladder is just stupid.

 

[miguelzin]

i think seeding by ladder is ok, the problem is the decay system that allows you to keep an account 2500 forever by just playing one game in 15 days. Imo you should get decayed like 50 points if you dont play at least 10 1v1s in 15 days. And also making the seeding of people who have more than one account the average of both would make it more fair.

 

[LowEloNobody]

I think the seeding was the best of imperfect options. There has not been any significant Nomad or hybrid maps tournament recently enough to be relevant. So using tournament seeding would be mostly based on Arabia and empire wars tournaments, neither of which are all that relevant for this tournament.
Ladder seeding normally would be an OK if imperfect method, but it was made far worse by the fact that many pros have not been consistently laddering.
I have seen a lot of complaining about the seeding, but no suggestions that would have improved the seeding results for this specific tournament

 

[Potkeny]

There has not been any significant Nomad or hybrid maps tournament recently enough to be relevant.

#Clearly the solution is to use Master of Socotra results, as that was the last tournament featuring heavy laming, castledropping, villfighting, and general clowning :P

 

[nimanoe]

I think the seeding was the best of imperfect options. There has not been any significant Nomad or hybrid maps tournament recently enough to be relevant. So using tournament seeding would be mostly based on Arabia and empire wars tournaments, neither of which are all that relevant for this tournament.

While this is true, the same can be said for the ladder rankings, which are less varied in terms of settings than having a combination of Empire Wars tournaments, arabia-only tournaments and mixed map tournaments would.

I have seen a lot of complaining about the seeding, but no suggestions that would have improved the seeding results for this specific tournament

There were quite a few suggestions, like aoe-elo.com or robo's seeding document. You're right that it's imperfect for these settings, but they're still a way better indicator than what we currently have.

Just look at the brackets:
Seed 1 (Villese) got eliminated by seed 16 (DauT)
Seed 2 (Sitaux) got eliminated by seed 15 (BadBoy)
Seed 3 (TheViper) won against seed 14 (Barles)
Seed 4 (ACCM) got eliminated by seed 13 (Vinchester)
Seed 5 (Capoch) won against seed 12 (BacT)
Seed 6 (Hera) got eliminated by seed 11 (Mr_Yo)
Seed 7 (Valas) got eliminated by seed 10 (TaToH)
Seed 8 (JorDan) got eliminated by seed 9 (Liereyy)

So 6 of the 8 top seeds got eliminated in the Ro16, how can anyone say this seeding was anywhere close to realistic or the best we could do?

Let's now look at the seeding from robo's document:
Seed 11 (Villese) got eliminated by seed 7 (DauT)
Seed 33 (Sitaux) got eliminated by seed 24 (BadBoy)
Seed 1 (TheViper) won against seed 29 (Barles)
Seed 5 (ACCM) got eliminated against seed 6 (Vinchester)
Seed 10 (Capoch) won against seed 13 (BacT)
Seed 3 (Hera) got eliminated by seed 4 (Mr_Yo)
Seed 34 (Valas) got eliminated by seed 9 (TaToH)
Seed 8 (JorDan) got elminated by seed 2 (Liereyy)

Even the two matches where the lower seeded player won, they were only seeded 1 below their opponent, so I think it's pretty clear which one would've been the better seeding.

 

[Memeluke]

Seedings should reflect exactly the final standings of the tournament, so that we don't waste time watching it because we already know the result.

To only have the chance for one of Yo, Viper, and Hera in the semis is a bit disappointing, and I know Hera and Yo haven't been at their best but they have still be performing consistently at a top 5-8 level.

I mean if you are consistently top 5-8, that's the same as saying that you are consistently out of the semifinals, so what's the problem here?

 

[TheShaunPlays]

Please do not start another seeding discussion. Players should read the handbooks and if they would have wanted to get a better seeding they would have grinded the ladder.

The complete seeding is on Liquipedia.

Seeding

As Shakal said, grinding ladder won't necessarily mean you get rewarded for a higher seed. The system they used was good because it removed subjectivity but it's clear it wasn't a valid way to seed players. I think Microsoft needs to look at competitive rankings, maybe bring Robo and Tarsiz on board to do it.

 

[LowEloNobody]

Tbh, I want the next non-arabia tournament to just have the hosts 100% subjectively seed the brackets.
No tournament results, no ladder ranking, no calculations, just Dave & T90 doing a live stream and saying "Yeah I think Yo is better than Hera so he gets the better seed" or "Sitaux is going to struggle on mixed maps so he gets a lower seed"
100% subjective and then we can just argue about the subjectivity instead of the methodology.
Also probably would have produced a better bracket

 

[amazing_knight]

Just look at the brackets:
Seed 1 (Villese) got eliminated by seed 16 (DauT)
Seed 2 (Sitaux) got eliminated by seed 15 (BadBoy)
Seed 3 (TheViper) won against seed 14 (Barles)
Seed 4 (ACCM) got eliminated by seed 13 (Vinchester)
Seed 5 (Capoch) won against seed 12 (BacT)
Seed 6 (Hera) got eliminated by seed 11 (Mr_Yo)
Seed 7 (Valas) got eliminated by seed 10 (TaToH)
Seed 8 (JorDan) got eliminated by seed 9 (Liereyy)

So what exactly is the problem with Seed 16 beating Seed 1, Seed 15 beating Seed 2 and so on?

Do we necessarily need to make the seedings so that Seed 1 to Seed 4 reach semis?

 

[LowEloNobody]

So what exactly is the problem with Seed 16 beating Seed 1, Seed 15 beating Seed 2 and so on?

Do we necessarily need to make the seedings so that Seed 1 to Seed 4 reach semis?

I don't think you NEED to, but most people would rather see a competitive semi's and finals, instead of a stomp. Bad seeding can lead to a #10-16 seed making it through and then just getting **** on by Biper or Yo.
We saw this with Jordan v Hera in the last hidden cup. The real "finals" were the Hera vs Viper set, and then Jordan only managed to win a single game. Not the most exciting finals

 

[nimanoe]

So what exactly is the problem with Seed 16 beating Seed 1, Seed 15 beating Seed 2 and so on?

Do we necessarily need to make the seedings so that Seed 1 to Seed 4 reach semis?

It's not a problem, we see it all the time that an underdog wins. This wasn't really the case here though, I don't think there were any big upsets, but according to the seeding 6 out of 8 matches were won by the underdog. This just shows that the seeding was awful.

And yes, I'd like to see a seeding system that's as accurate as possible, which would mean that the top 4 seeds reach the semi's, unless they get beaten by one of the lower seeds. This makes it so much more impactful when someone outside of the top 4 reaches semi's, like Vinchester in KotD4, where he beat 3 out of the top 4 to get in the grand finals. If someone reaches the semifinals because they're lucky and got an easy bracket, it's just not as impressive.

And if you really do want players to have a chance to get an easy bracket, you should advocate for random seeding, not bad seeding as that's the worst of both worlds.

Tbh, I want the next non-arabia tournament to just have the hosts 100% subjectively seed the brackets.
No tournament results, no ladder ranking, no calculations, just Dave & T90 doing a live stream and saying "Yeah I think Yo is better than Hera so he gets the better seed" or "Sitaux is going to struggle on mixed maps so he gets a lower seed"

This would have resolved the "but none of the systems account for the nomad-style maps" reason people are using to defend the ladder seeding. It's also how most tournaments were seeded around 2014-2015, but we moved away from it as there was quite a bit of criticism about the objectivity from the people who seeded the brackets. Personally I wouldn't be against it, although you do have to be transparent about it. And yeah it definitely would have given better brackets than the ones we got now 11

 

[Influenza]

any seeding that allowed stream cheater extraordinaire badboy into the quarter finals was clearly poorly done. Imagine they seeded csgo tournaments based on the players average faceit ranking and not tournament results, despite there being an abundance of tournaments, as there is in AoE2... just ridiculous. Although what can you really expect from the makers of hidden cup

 

[Freezing_Point]

I don't think you NEED to, but most people would rather see a competitive semi's and finals, instead of a stomp. Bad seeding can lead to a #10-16 seed making it through and then just getting **** on by Biper or Yo.
We saw this with Jordan v Hera in the last hidden cup. The real "finals" were the Hera vs Viper set, and then Jordan only managed to win a single game. Not the most exciting finals

Jordan got that far by stomping Mr. Yo after beating another top 10 player in ACCM and the Hidden Cup 1 finalist/Hidden Cup 2 semifinalist MbL. He didn't exactly get handed a finals spot on a platter or anything.

 

[ltm]

So what exactly is the problem with Seed 16 beating Seed 1, Seed 15 beating Seed 2 and so on?

Do we necessarily need to make the seedings so that Seed 1 to Seed 4 reach semis?

Nothing wrong with upsets but reflecting the players strength and pairing them accordingly is the point of the seeding and well...no disrespect but lets be real when Viper is seeded below Villese at #1 and Sitaux #2 or Jordan, Liereyy, Tatoh all after Valas at #7 while Yo didn't even make top 10 that just means the seeding process didn't achieve what it was supposed to do.

 

[TopperHarley]

Nothing wrong with upsets but reflecting the players strength and pairing them accordingly is the point of the seeding and well...no disrespect but lets be real when Viper is seeded below Villese at #1 and Sitaux #2 or Jordan, Liereyy, Tatoh all after Valas at #7 while Yo didn't even make top 10 that just means the seeding process didn't achieve what it was supposed to do.

The organizeers mentioned that the intention behind this kind of seeding was to encourage players to play the 1v1 ladder (something that many pros didnt do regularly when this tournament was announced.).

Did the organizers think that this would lead to a 1v1 ladder with the usual favorites (Viper,Yo, Lierrey etc) at the top?
Obviously not.

Therefore, the intention was to "mix things up" a little bit. Most other tournaments have the usual suspects seeded at 1-4, giving them the "easiest" path to the semifinal.

A nice side effect of this seeding system was that the RO16 already had some very exciting matchups that you would normally see a bit later (Yo-Hera, Villese-Daut), so it probably generated bigger viewer numbers by that (i myself was also more excited for this RO16 in comparison to other tourneys).

Is using the 1v1 ladder for seeding a great system that should be applied to every future tournament? Again, obviously not, and i am pretty confident that we will see the "usual suspects" at the top seeds in most upcoming big tournaments as per usual

 

[felix.feroc]

So, looking at this thread made me wonder if something like how professional tennis seeds tournaments based on previous tournament placements would work here. Because I have been using the liquipedia api to get data for my podcast (and I only broke the throttling rules once -- sorry guys!), I downloaded the tournament histories of all the players I could and ran the algorithm the ATP uses (my implementation described here) and came up with results I think are pretty good. Of course, the scaling could be refined by people with a better sense of things, but I think it might be a reasonable way forward.

Here is the list of the top ten using tennis seeding:
1. TheViper
2. Liereyy
3. Hera
4. Mr_Yo
5. JorDan_AoE
6. TaToH
7. Vinchester
8. ACCM
9. DauT
10. Villese

I also checked how tennis seeding compared against the official seeding in terms of upsets (when any lower seed beats a higher seed). We both agree that these are upsets:

Spoiler: upsets

• Fish over Hallis
• saymyname over Kasva
• Lyx over LaN
• BadBoy over Sitaux
• Mr_Yo over Hera

Tennis seeding calls

Spoiler: upset

BadBoy over classicpro

an upset, but the official seeding does not.

The official seeding calls the following upsets but the tennis seeding does not:

Spoiler: upsets

• DauT over miguel
• DauT over Villese
• Liereyy over JorDan_AoE
• Vinchester over ACCM
• TaToH over Valas

 

[oozkan]

Another seeding thread, *sigh*. Well looking for positives, there are things I like about these threads. They keep reminding Yo won against Hera. At least that's satisfying.

 

[ltm]

The organizeers mentioned that the intention behind this kind of seeding was to encourage players to play the 1v1 ladder (something that many pros didnt do regularly when this tournament was announced.).

Did the organizers think that this would lead to a 1v1 ladder with the usual favorites (Viper,Yo, Lierrey etc) at the top?
Obviously not.

Therefore, the intention was to "mix things up" a little bit. Most other tournaments have the usual suspects seeded at 1-4, giving them the "easiest" path to the semifinal.

A nice side effect of this seeding system was that the RO16 already had some very exciting matchups that you would normally see a bit later (Yo-Hera, Villese-Daut), so it probably generated bigger viewer numbers by that (i myself was also more excited for this RO16 in comparison to other tourneys).

Is using the 1v1 ladder for seeding a great system that should be applied to every future tournament? Again, obviously not, and i am pretty confident that we will see the "usual suspects" at the top seeds in most upcoming big tournaments as per usual

Yeah, i just don't think intention of seeding should ever be to "mix it up", encourage grinding or intentionally seed worse players higher to get different brackets but rather simply rank competitors by strength. Of course it's their tournament, so they can also seed Viper at 69 if they want to, but i don't see the appeal of that and also idk about this bringing actually better matches/viewers.

No big deal , just a bit silly when all casters and people in chat laugh about the seeding of the pro players because everyone knows it's completely wrong 11.

 

[King_Marv]

Why this discussion again?
Ladder is good enough for seeding - everyone has the chance to play and improve the rating. If someone is not playing is their fault.
And also how is it an upset if villese lose vs daut. They are both top 16 players so they can lose vs each other. It’s happening all the time.

its depending on daily performance, maps, civ Match ups, random other factors, luck, timing whatever. It’s not like they are computers

 

[PROject_Belgium]

Why this discussion again?
Ladder is good enough for seeding - everyone has the chance to play and improve the rating. If someone is not playing is their fault.
And also how is it an upset if villese lose vs daut. They are both top 16 players so they can lose vs each other. It’s happening all the time.

its depending on daily performance, maps, civ Match ups, random other factors, luck, timing whatever. It’s not like they are computers

Ladder rating shows how good you play on ladder maps. This tournament didn't have ladder maps (besides nomad) so not a good indicator for the skill level. Instead they should have used a combination of tournament elo and ladder elo. To clarity I'm not complaining 11 had alot of fun with this tournament

 

[DracKeN]

Why this discussion again?
Ladder is good enough for seeding - everyone has the chance to play and improve the rating. If someone is not playing is their fault.
And also how is it an upset if villese lose vs daut. They are both top 16 players so they can lose vs each other. It’s happening all the time.

its depending on daily performance, maps, civ Match ups, random other factors, luck, timing whatever. It’s not like they are computers

I'm also fine with ladder seeding for that specific tournament, despite the difference between brackets is huge (talking about Badboy's bracket and the rest basically). Also the argument that some players should have grinded more if they wanted better seeding is fair, although it's not really Hera's/Viper's fault that Yo didn't grind and is seed 11. And in the end it's not optimal for the tournament either, that two biggest favorites are already matching in QFs (while Yo had to also eliminate slam and Hera on the way 11).

At the same time, given the specifics of this tournament, ladder seeding was also a fine and justified choice, although using different method would likely bring more accurate brackets.

 

[King_Marv]

Ladder rating shows how good you play on ladder maps. This tournament didn't have ladder maps (besides nomad) so not a good indicator for the skill level. Instead they should have used a combination of tournament elo and ladder elo. To clarity I'm not complaining 11 had alot of fun with this tournament

the ladder has a lot of maps. Closed ones, open, nomad, water ‚ hybrid.
you will never have a accurate rating on boundary brawl or some other special maps.

what would help is if there was a ladder for the most played maps or better map categories. But that’s a optimistic wish lol