I'm really curious because I don't really like creating any tournaments over 12 players because I might not ever play them.  They aren't new anymore and regular open games seem to fill up pretty quickly so I just don't understand why tournaments just sit there.

I'm looking for people who aren't the "Regulars" to comment here.  Most of the WarCore join tournies when they like the map or like the trophy and we also check the tab regularly, so I'm just curious what some more casual players think about the setup and if there are any suggestions on how they could fill up quicker.

I'll hang up and listen for my answer...

I think there are a few reasons.  Mainly, I feel like I have much better options over here.  At ToS you had what, that one public game that would pop up at the top of your screen?  Here at wargear I have a whole mess of public games front and center that I can join when I need to fill out my game roster that don't require even the nominal wait that tourneys required over there.  I used tourneys to get more games against players I didn't know, and here it is much easier to do that without them.

Also, I get frustrated when I win a tourney game while I am in the middle of a dry spell.  I feel like I have just wasted a win on a tourney game instead of a game that would count towards my board ranking.  I am not saying I want tourney games to count towards board rankings, because that wouldn't make much sense, but it with all of these cool rankings and stats and such, I want my games to count, and when I win a tourney game sometimes it feels underwhelming because I don't get any credit for it.

I think the tourney options could use some tweaking.  Round-Robin is kind of unwieldy because you are committing yourself to a whole slough of games.  I know at the end of that neverland tournament, I was sick of playing those games.  The swiss system leads to a lot of seemingly meaningless games, because if you don't win your first game, the second two don't really matter, and if you don't win your second game, the third doesn't matter.  Elimination games are only single elimination, so it is hard to get invested in them because you are gone too quickly.  I know it is hard to manage the mathmatics of tournament creation, but I am sure everyone else sees all the wish lists people come to the forums with, like "hey, wouldn't it be cool if there was a tourney set up like the world cup where there were group stages that led into a single elimination tournament," or "hey, wouldn't it be cool if we could set up a tournament that played multiple games with the same people on different maps, and you got points based on your ending position, like 10 pts for first, 8 pts for second, 1 pt for last, etc, and then the winner was decided at the end of all rounds played," etc, etc, etc.  Our ideas go past what we have the math to standardize, if you know what I mean. 

Maybe if we had more one-off tournament options that didn't require the math to make them scalable?  Like if we had the world cup idea that could only handle 32 players, or the cup style option what could only handle 8 players, that way the math wouldn't get unwieldy.  At the very least, a double elimination option would be nice, since it is what the majority of us know.  In the end, I understand why more options haven't been created, because I feel it is unreasonable to demand the amount of time and effort from Tom that would go into creating them. 

I try to keep a few tourneys going at once, but this site makes joining other games so much easier that I just forget sometimes.

I think just having double elimination tournaments would be a fairly simple solution that gets us 90% of what we really want.  The other stuff would be great, but is much more complicated.

Great post by The Rope, very good info that I hadn't ever thought about.

and here i am just the opposite; 94% of my 30ish games are tourneys. I only go out and look at normal games when i find i'm low on tourney games or i'm bored and need more.

Some good ideas there The Rope... I like the idea of 'standard' tournaments with a fixed format. The math and code logic is just horrible when you have to deal with all the possible cases (player numbers and board types) and it wouldn't have been possible without help from our resident math gurus. If the format is fixed it's really easy to hard code this.

What are the suggestions for how this would work in practice? A choice of either 32 (small) / 64 (large) player tournaments sounds like a sweet spot for the site right now in terms of sizing. I think we would want to support either 2 player (Duel) or 4 player (teamplay / free for all) boards initially. 

How about double elimination for general sizes.  Is that complicated?

Ozyman wrote:

How about double elimination for general sizes.  Is that complicated?

Double elimination for two player games is easy of course. 

I've been dabbling with a general way of doing it for n-player.  I've only been able to get a nice way of doing it for 3 player/27 person tournaments.  The match-ups don't work out in other cases.

I think we could do it if we agreed on some seeding/tie-breaking to fill-up games with eliminated players when there is not enough remaining players to fill up all the games in a round.

How does it handle booted players? Does it completely screw up the succeeding rounds?

Amidon37 wrote:

Ozyman wrote:

How about double elimination for general sizes.  Is that complicated?

Double elimination for two player games is easy of course. 

I've been dabbling with a general way of doing it for n-player.  I've only been able to get a nice way of doing it for 3 player/27 person tournaments.  The match-ups don't work out in other cases.

I think we could do it if we agreed on some seeding/tie-breaking to fill-up games with eliminated players when there is not enough remaining players to fill up all the games in a round.

If the loser's bracket "keeps pace" with the winner's bracket, we can always make an n-player n^n-person tournament work. This is workable for 3^3 and maybe 4^4, but after that, it's a lot. By loosening some constraints, we might have other options.

Also, the endgame for multiplayer can take a few rounds. For example, for 3-player, the championship is between a player with 0 eliminations and two players with 1 elimination. If one of the 1-elimination players wins, we get two players with 1-elimination and one with 2 eliminations. Play again. If the 2-elimination player wins, all three have 2-eliminations and we play one more game. (So, the "double elimination" is relaxed once we reach a championship game.)

An example of loosened constraints: 4-player, 32-person "double elimination tournament". First round: 8 in WB, 24 in LB. Second round: 2 in WB, 6 + 6 = 12 survive in LB. Now create 4 games, each with 3 from the LB and 1 from the WB. So, the 2 WB players play two games in this round. If both WB players win both games, it's either a re-do or a tie. If only one of them does, that's the winner. If there are no WB double-winners, take the four winners and make a championship game. (Note that if a WB lost both games, they've been "double eliminated".)

We should be able to make numbers smaller than n^n work if we do goofy stuff like this.  This particular variation works for n-player 2*n*n-person tournaments.

Also - the double elimination survival tournaments on ToS are fairly simple to execute: for any even amount of players, use a 2-player double elimination structure, where winner and loser are replaced by top surviving half and lower surviving half. (Somehow in the pursuit of crazy math, I forgot that these were fairly popular and simple.)

The only thing worth changing is how the championship round is executed. There we could use the endgame idea from above: keep playing until all but one player has been double eliminated. If all players in the championship round are double eliminated, keep playing until the tie on # of eliminations is broken.

I agree with everything here about double elimination tournaments and I can't find any flaws in Hugh's math (also I see no flaws in 2+2=Ice Cream).

I don't think that solves the issues that The Rope stated which is that tournaments are not as important because games are so open and available.  There are reasons for playing tournament games still.  They don't count towards a standard player's game limit (I think), you get a trophy for your wall (awesome) and there are tournament ranking points.  I think we need to get these things out there more for newer players and people who just join games and don't really participate in the discourse.

Is there a way we could use the Growl pop up to give a "once a login" message that says "Did you know..." or sometlhing like that (also have the ability to turn it off from settings).  I think that somebody who has 10 games going would join tournaments to get more games and then they would fill up faster, end faster so people would join more.

In Theory I think my plan is perfect and thusly I have already implemented it in my mind.

It may not be the most efficient, but taking "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" approach to tournament designs may be the most effective in the long run. I have some ideas, Hugh has some, others have been posted in other threads.  I don't think we'll know until they are out there what will work and what won't.

I am not a big fan of the "top half move on" format, but if others like it then why not?

I do know that I have largely quit playing tournaments because the swiss and the round robin set-ups were putting me into too many games that I didn't care about.

I had forgotten about the non-premium member aspect, that is good point.  I like the idea of advertizing it to non-premium dudes as a way to get them more involved in the site.

Also, thinking about the elimination/double elimination tournaments, there is no visual bracket-style page to go scour over.  Everyone loves a good bracket.  Would anyone even join a Final 4 pool if they didn't get to fill out their bracket?  I love those things, and being able to watch my progression through them, and see where I am in relation to other people or the end of the tournament.

Maybe the tournament page itself could use some tweaking?  Like right now my top 15 on the top of the page are gummed up with 4 cancelled tournaments and a bunch of 'invited'.  I think maybe a separate area underneath the active tournaments for invitations might make sense, so they aren't all scattered amongst your other active tournaments so it is easier to keep track of the tourneys you actually have going.  The cancelled tourneys should probably just sort to the end of your list, kind of like terminated games do on the games list. 

I feel like I keep being overly negative, and I don't mean it to be that way.  I to feel like tournaments should be a bigger part of this site.  I don't think we can blame a lack of members anymore, so there has to be something else at work.

You know, going back to the idea of not getting credit, wouldn't it be cool to make winning tournaments a bigger deal?  I mean, you get your trophy which is awesome, but actually winning a tournament is a pretty big deal.  A little 'latest winners' sidebar like the 'latest maps' sidebar on the front page would be pretty easy to implement, and would let people get their name up in the lights a little bit.

Ooh, ooh, what if we had some site-sanctioned tournaments that were advertized and followed?  Like an invitational that invites the top 32 ranked on a certain board, or a pro-am team tourney that puts the 16 top players with 16 ~50% H-rating players.  Something to get more people paying attention to specific tournaments, and thus tournaments in general.

This is getting away from me, so here are some important (to me) ideas:

1. Cleaner Tourney List (separate invited section, cancelled sorted to the end)

2. Latest Winners Sidebar (winner name, tourney name, and trophy)

3. Actual Bracket Visuals for the elimination tournaments

The Rope wrote:

I had forgotten about the non-premium member aspect, that is good point.  I like the idea of advertizing it to non-premium dudes as a way to get them more involved in the site.

Also, thinking about the elimination/double elimination tournaments, there is no visual bracket-style page to go scour over.  Everyone loves a good bracket.  Would anyone even join a Final 4 pool if they didn't get to fill out their bracket?  I love those things, and being able to watch my progression through them, and see where I am in relation to other people or the end of the tournament.

Maybe the tournament page itself could use some tweaking?  Like right now my top 15 on the top of the page are gummed up with 4 cancelled tournaments and a bunch of 'invited'.  I think maybe a separate area underneath the active tournaments for invitations might make sense, so they aren't all scattered amongst your other active tournaments so it is easier to keep track of the tourneys you actually have going.  The cancelled tourneys should probably just sort to the end of your list, kind of like terminated games do on the games list. 

I feel like I keep being overly negative, and I don't mean it to be that way.  I to feel like tournaments should be a bigger part of this site.  I don't think we can blame a lack of members anymore, so there has to be something else at work.

You know, going back to the idea of not getting credit, wouldn't it be cool to make winning tournaments a bigger deal?  I mean, you get your trophy which is awesome, but actually winning a tournament is a pretty big deal.  A little 'latest winners' sidebar like the 'latest maps' sidebar on the front page would be pretty easy to implement, and would let people get their name up in the lights a little bit.

Ooh, ooh, what if we had some site-sanctioned tournaments that were advertized and followed?  Like an invitational that invites the top 32 ranked on a certain board, or a pro-am team tourney that puts the 16 top players with 16 ~50% H-rating players.  Something to get more people paying attention to specific tournaments, and thus tournaments in general.

This is getting away from me, so here are some important (to me) ideas:

1. Cleaner Tourney List (separate invited section, cancelled sorted to the end)

2. Latest Winners Sidebar (winner name, tourney name, and trophy)

3. Actual Bracket Visuals for the elimination tournaments

+1

4. Unique, sanctioned, publicized tournaments are an excellent idea!

+1000

Mad Bomber wrote:

when i was a non prem member tournaments were huge in keeping my game count around 20 vs the standard 10.  I did not know that they didn't count twords the standard 10 for a long time...this should be written somewhere and everywhere

I was about to reply to this thread that since I am not a premium member, and am already involved in ten games, that I could not sign into a tournament...untill I saw this.

I just signed up for tournaments, now that I know that I can and it doesn't count against my game limit.

Snake Eyes wrote:

Mad Bomber wrote:

when i was a non prem member tournaments were huge in keeping my game count around 20 vs the standard 10.  I did not know that they didn't count twords the standard 10 for a long time...this should be written somewhere and everywhere

I was about to reply to this thread that since I am not a premium member, and am already involved in ten games, that I could not sign into a tournament...untill I saw this.

I just signed up for tournaments, now that I know that I can and it doesn't count against my game limit.

But if you have 10 tournament games running, can you still join new standard games ?

Mad Bomber wrote:

when i was a non prem member tournaments were huge in keeping my game count around 20 vs the standard 10.  I did not know that they didn't count twords the standard 10 for a long time...this should be written somewhere and everywhere

I see no great need to publicize the fact that there's unlimited tournament play.  The idea is to get people to become Premium members.  But I agree that information and current status needs to be easily accessed. How about killing two or three birds with one or two stones ..where it gets noticed when it counts?

On the My Games page, as well as the Join Game page, maybe something like..

As a Standard Member, you are currently playing in 6 of your allotted 10 free games. Check out the FAQ's to learn more about Standard Member features. Even better, support WarGear and become a Premium Member to start enjoying a bunch of cool features including access to unlimited play ..and to get rid of this annoying message.

M57 wrote:

Mad Bomber wrote:

when i was a non prem member tournaments were huge in keeping my game count around 20 vs the standard 10.  I did not know that they didn't count twords the standard 10 for a long time...this should be written somewhere and everywhere

I see no great need to publicize the fact that there's unlimited tournament play.  The idea is to get people to become Premium members.  But I agree that information and current status needs to be easily accessed. How about killing two or three birds with one or two stones ..where it gets noticed when it counts?

On the My Games page, as well as the Join Game page, maybe something like..

As a Standard Member, you are currently playing in 6 of your allotted 10 free games. Check out the FAQ's to learn more about Standard Member features. Even better, support WarGear and become a Premium Member to start enjoying a bunch of cool features including access to unlimited play ..and to get rid of this annoying message.

 

I don't really see a difference between this and the pop-up growls that somebody mentioned before.

Creating in-your-face advertizing for Premium memberships will most likely annoy more people than it will benefit.

The Rope's point before about sanctioned/sponsored tournaments is a good idea.  The whole point is to create energy and enthusiasm around tournament play perhaps more than there is today with the T-score and trophies. Think of the viewers the World Cup gets around the world!