Undecided on the actual matter of the poll, while having more tournaments is good, I certainly wouldn't want TSL all the time, anything more frequent than, say, every six months would be overkill. From the first qualifier through to the final took over four months anyway, so logistically it might not even be realistic to have it that often - maybe every eight months?
More important than actual frequency, I'm thinking more of the actual format of the event than anything. I didn't think it was as well structured as TSL2 for a few reasons:
- Too many Korean invites. Can obviously cut a ton of them down as a lot were for foreign players that were over there at the time, and now it's just Jinro/Huk, but half the field getting a free pass didn't sit too well with me.
- Qualification method was awfully crapshooty. It's not like TSL2 where you needed to play a lot because of the iccup laddering method, and it's based on a lot of games. SC2 is so variance filled that anyone above a certain standard where they can take a game off anyone with a high enough probability can just run good on one day, get to a final and boom in, given that it's a straight knockout.
So how would I do things? I'd go something like this, very similar to TSL2 in how it operates, but qualification would obviously be different:
- Thorzain, Naniwa, Kas obv seeded, I'd have them straight through to the last 16
Then:
- 6 Korean invites, limited to those that have won a GSL in 2011 and any foreigners that are still left permanently in Korea
- 4 other Koreans from an open qualifier. I think since last time when TSL admins basically said this wasn't practical, the infrastructure and level of Korea-elsewhere co-operation is improved to the stage where this could actually happen
- 8 wildcards from winners of major foreign tournaments (MLG, NASL, IEM, IPL, Dreamhack etc)
- 8 winners of TL Open qualification events
- 26 points qualifiers from the same 8 qualifiers. Ideally I'd have these run as swiss events (with same number of rounds as needed to get a single player with a perfect record, so 9 for a 512 player event, 10 for 1024, in order to get a winner) as this is clearly the fairest way and would allow you to just sort by wins, and prevent things like Kiwikaki (or was it Incontrol? Some NA Protoss anyway) going out the round before points start being scored on multiple occasions, Select/Strelok going deep in multiple events but being forced into a playoff while Ciara/Zeerax can get in based on more or less one good run. With the power of the internet it'd be easy enough to code the backend to it and reward consistency a lot more, plus it'd have the benefit of allowing people to sign up and get matches later on in a given event against players similar to their skill level if they're playing just for fun and/or hoping to run into a big name player, allowing for people to play against those they wouldn't do otherwise within the SC2/TL community. Or, if a straight knockout is the must-do thing, have the points be less top-heavy, seven of the eight points qualifiers this time did so with points from getting to a final.
This would give you 52. Split them into 13 groups of 4, two automatic qualifiers (let's call them A&B) and two points qualifiers (let's call them C&D), and run as follows, each match being bo3:
Match 1: C plays D, loser is eliminated Match 2: A plays B, winner goes to the group final, loser plays the winner of match 1 Match 3: Winner 1 vs Loser 2, loser is eliminated Final: Winner 2 vs Winner 3, winner qualifies for the Ro16, loser is eliminated
And boom, you have your 16 players, straight knockout from there, broadcast on something other than ustream :-)
This became a bit of a wall of text. Oops. But how would you tweak things?
From what I saw in TSL3 I would rather have the 3 seeds from the TSL3 and the rest have to qualify from the TL Opens for TSL4.
The people who qualified did much better than the invitees. It is great and all that they invited a lot but the TSL's have one of the coolest things going for them, anyone had a shot at making it if you could do well and win a TL open or do well enough at them to qualify on points. It is the type of tournament that makes new names show up on the radar or has old names dominate and drive to victory.
I do like the extended format on point qualifiers though.
I think the heavy focus on qualifiers is exactly what made this TSL so great. Even if some of the players that go through aren't exactly up to par with the competition in TSL, the motivation of being in a TSL alone can serve to create some amazing players out of the talents that managed to make it through the qualifiers.
The points system assured that good consistent players that were unfortunate enough not to reach a first place despite placing well in several tournaments still were able to get through, not to mention it created quite a bit of intrigue/excitement towards the end of the qualification process. It also rewards dedicated players that show up for each and every one of those qualifiers, which is something I like.
Korean invites or no korean invites is a question on whether there should be koreans in the TSL at all, because running qualifiers with koreans is extremely impractical and takes a shit ton of extra work. I for one was ecstatic to see boxer playing and doing well in a TSL.
I agree with Kralic, at least until the apparent skill fluctuation in SCII stabilizes. I'm sure the big names will be able to get in through qualifiers...
hm i dont think that would be a fair system because 1-the point qualifiers would have less of a chance of winning their group (why that?) 2-only 1 player of each group makes it out of it so if there is a very hard group of players that could all potentially make the finals it will be very bad for the viewers and also for the players that had bad luck 3-what you do if 1 player wins 2 of the "big events" (ipl a big event???) 4-how would you possibly organize a korean qualifier and who would you invite to it? 5wut-26 point qualifiers from 8 TL-Opens??? it would (almost) be enough to get to the quaterfinals once and get right in it??? that doesnt solve your problem with the qualifier thingy either
but its nice that you think about it and im sure that the idea has potential
I think they they should just create a league system like they had for TSL2 and then cast some of the best games/upsets from the week every Saturday.
They could have some Korean invites, but you should not be invited just because you managed to win an MLG or something like that, you should still have to qualify.
Current format (with qualifiers from tlopens and a plain single elimination tree for main tournament) is really great and shouldn't be changed. It'll still be tons better than any complicated format you could think of, just for the sake of making people unable to understand it.
It'd be cool if they could run qualifiers in Asia too (Korea, China SEA...), but invites are still fine if not possible.
On May 19 2011 00:44 Kralic wrote: From what I saw in TSL3 I would rather have the 3 seeds from the TSL3 and the rest have to qualify from the TL Opens for TSL4.
The people who qualified did much better than the invitees. It is great and all that they invited a lot but the TSL's have one of the coolest things going for them, anyone had a shot at making it if you could do well and win a TL open or do well enough at them to qualify on points. It is the type of tournament that makes new names show up on the radar or has old names dominate and drive to victory.
I do like the extended format on point qualifiers though.
Dude. Between TSL 2 and TSL3 many things happened. Firstly TSL2 was a Starcraft: Brood War tournament. You just cannot expect players who participated in TSL2 to have the same training advantage over other participants in a whole brand new game. Starcraft 2 more or less levelled the playing field. Everybody had to start learning all over again. Some pros like Jan Fei, Mondragon, became less active or changed life priorities. Secondly, Starcraft 2 came out. The game is new, rapidly evolving, getting balance patches and has a united many communities under itself such as the WC3/TFT community, probably some Command and Conquer guys, Red Alert players, Supreme Commander people etc. etc. etc.
I honestly don't understand how you can even try to compare the seeds from TSL2 into TSL3 to the seeds from TSL3 into TSL4. It's just beyond me.
Too be honest I love the TSL it's much better to have less matches and delaying it so you get hyped up hate the NASL format where I just don't care about it. I'd be fine with it being on all the time however making it an annual thing would make it more special which might be a great thing.
On May 19 2011 00:44 Kralic wrote: From what I saw in TSL3 I would rather have the 3 seeds from the TSL3 and the rest have to qualify from the TL Opens for TSL4.
The people who qualified did much better than the invitees. It is great and all that they invited a lot but the TSL's have one of the coolest things going for them, anyone had a shot at making it if you could do well and win a TL open or do well enough at them to qualify on points. It is the type of tournament that makes new names show up on the radar or has old names dominate and drive to victory.
I do like the extended format on point qualifiers though.
Dude. Between TSL 2 and TSL3 many things happened. Firstly TSL2 was a Starcraft: Brood War tournament. You just cannot expect players who participated in TSL2 to have the same training advantage over other participants in a whole brand new game. Starcraft 2 more or less levelled the playing field. Everybody had to start learning all over again. Some pros like Jan Fei, Mondragon, became less active or changed life priorities. Secondly, Starcraft 2 came out. The game is new, rapidly evolving, getting balance patches and has a united many communities under itself such as the WC3/TFT community, probably some Command and Conquer guys, Red Alert players, Supreme Commander people etc. etc. etc.
I honestly don't understand how you can even try to compare the seeds from TSL2 into TSL3 to the seeds from TSL3 into TSL4. It's just beyond me.
I think he was mostly talking about the players invited from Korea--most of whom were knocked out in the first round--rather than the people invited based on the TSL2.
On May 19 2011 01:29 Latham wrote: Dude. Between TSL 2 and TSL3 many things happened. Firstly TSL2 was a Starcraft: Brood War tournament. You just cannot expect players who participated in TSL2 to have the same training advantage over other participants in a whole brand new game. Starcraft 2 more or less levelled the playing field. Everybody had to start learning all over again. Some pros like Jan Fei, Mondragon, became less active or changed life priorities. Secondly, Starcraft 2 came out. The game is new, rapidly evolving, getting balance patches and has a united many communities under itself such as the WC3/TFT community, probably some Command and Conquer guys, Red Alert players, Supreme Commander people etc. etc. etc.
I honestly don't understand how you can even try to compare the seeds from TSL2 into TSL3 to the seeds from TSL3 into TSL4. It's just beyond me.
I am not comparing the seeds from TSL2 to their performance in TSL3. The seed system is fine it rewards previous success in the TSL. I was not impressed with all the invites that were former GSL champions and various other players. The players that qualified seemed to do better in the long run of the tournament. Thus that leads me to believe that having a system focused more on players that qualified than people invited to the TSL because they won another tournament not related to the TSL makes more sense.
It makes more sense to make the Koreans try for the money instead of essentially being given it by being invited and automatically seeded. If they have to try to actually get in, they will probably put in more effort than they did in TSL3 where it seemed like they only half tried.
Gonna be honest, I think that group system sucks--just like GSL's.
There are only two good group systems imo:
Round Robin (everyone plays everyone, the players with 3-0 and 2-1 advance, 1-2 and 0-3 eliminated, if there is 3 players with 2-1, they play tiebreaker games until one player has the worst record, if there is 3 players with 1-2, they play tiebreaker games until one player has the best record)
ODT/MST groups: A v B C v D winner of A/B v winner of C/D (winner advances to next round) loser of A/B v loser of C/D (loser is eliminated) last two players remaining (winner gets the final spot) one player 2-0 one 2-1 one 1-2 one 0-2.
The advantage of the round robin is it allows everyone to play everyone, but tiebreakers can get time-consuming when the players are evenly matched, so that is its weakness.
ODT/MST are fair and equitable--when you lose a game, you shouldn't play STRONGER opponents.... (the person who won the other game) That puts too much reward into winning the FIRST game as opposed to being a better player. 2 wins will always always always no matter what allow you to advance and 2 losses will always always always eliminate you. Fair and simple, no?
I don't like your group system particularly because: No one should be eliminated after just one game (C/D) C/D has to 3-0 the group to qualify, A/B has to 2-0 it
I don't see the reasoning behind making it so much harder on the points qualifiers... if the non-points qualifiers are truly better players then with a fair and equitable group scenario they should win tbqh. And how is a relative newcomer going to advance far when the group format is stacked against him?
I don't like any system where a group of 4 has only one person advance. I would rather see groups of 8 with a full round robin (Bo1) and 2 people advance--it provides more possibilities for the players stuck in groups with a superstar to advance.
I don't like your group system particularly because: No one should be eliminated after just one game (C/D) C/D has to 3-0 the group to qualify, A/B has to 2-0 it
I worked it like that because they would qualify on account of being the best of the rest - they didn't actually win a qualifier in this system. It's no different to how TSL2 had players who had got positions 1-12 only needing to win one series to make the round of 16, whereas those from 25 downwards needed to win three. It's giving an advantage to those that have earned it through winning.
Besides, how is that different to the points qualifiers in TSL3 being thrown to Nony/Iron/MVP/Nada/Sen/Jinro/Zergbong/Mondragon and in half the cases getting 2-0'ed straight out of the tournament in their first game?
I don't like your group system particularly because: No one should be eliminated after just one game (C/D) C/D has to 3-0 the group to qualify, A/B has to 2-0 it
I worked it like that because they would qualify on account of being the best of the rest - they didn't actually win a qualifier in this system. It's no different to how TSL2 had players who had got positions 1-12 only needing to win one series to make the round of 16, whereas those from 25 downwards needed to win three. It's giving an advantage to those that have earned it through winning.
Besides, how is that different to the points qualifiers in TSL3 being thrown to Nony/Iron/MVP/Nada/Sen/Jinro/Zergbong/Mondragon and in half the cases getting 2-0'ed straight out of the tournament in their first game?
I would argue that it is quite different, because the people that had an advantage in TSL2 got their advantage through their performance in TSL qualification. I don't see how an invited player should get an advantage over another player when the invited player's performance is based off of other tournaments. If they truly deserve an advantage, they should prove it somehow by performance in a TSL competition themselves (although by the nature of sc2 a TSL ladder is impossible and silly)
Also, i disagree with TSL3 being entirely single elimination. I think there should always be some sort of group phase or qualification phase early on--it really sucks to be that one player that gets matched up with the gosu first round and doesn't get a chance to show their skills.
I completely disagree with all of your suggestions. I realize my post isn't necessarily providing extensive feedback as to what i'd like to see done differently but i still think it's important to factor in that there might be a lot of us who find your suggested solution highly problematic.
Thankfully you've destroyed your own idea by adding the "- 8 wildcards from winners of major foreign tournaments (MLG, NASL, IEM, IPL, Dreamhack etc)" which will mean 6 or more Koreans from that category alone.
EPT
