According to the article, the the first seed in NASL will face the open bracket winner.
Am I the only one who thinks this is a bad choice??? Typically, the first seed faces the weakest player. But I actually think the open bracket winner will be one of the strongest players, if not the strongest.
Imagine if MMA, Bomber, Thorzain, etc... signs up for the open tournament. In my opinion it is better to NOT be first seed because of this.
Anyone else agree with this and think the rules need to be re-evaluated? Or am I misunderstanding something?
This is how tourneys work in every sport, top seeded player plays lowest ranked player. Take tennis as an example, Nadal would always get a very easy opponent first round where as the 20th seed would get a relatively harder opponent.
In this case, the lowest ranked player would be the open winner
In the end it doesn't matter...but I feel that rule punishes the first seed because there's a high probability the open bracket winner will be better than the 10-16th seeds.
I really hope NASL re-evaluate this rule because as a spectator I would like to see guys like July, Select, Ret, etc... not get knocked out by the open Seed if it happens to be a really strong opponent.
The open bracket winner is an unknown. It can be somebody terrifyingly good or terribly bad. I agree that we should not take the risk and put the top seed vs. open bracket winner. I don't want a NASL final similar to Inca vs. Nestea GSL final where Inca is not obviously the best competition for Nestea.
sc2guy: do you really believe the open bracket winner will be terribly bad?? it's a $50,000 tournament. I imagine a lot of Koreans trying to eat a piece of the pie. Guys like MMA, Losira, etc... will be tempted to sign up. Just a thought.
NASL has a lot of strong players. But I truly believe there are a lot of powerful SC2 players who will sign up for NASL. Just look at all who flocked to MLG, and that was for only $5000.
This just underlines NASL's stupidity in general. They invited people like Artosis, Grubby, Painuser, etc. when they clearly weren't the top 50 players in the world, and now you have problems like these.
On June 09 2011 11:28 Kraznaya wrote: This just underlines NASL's stupidity in general. They invited people like Artosis, Grubby, Painuser, etc. when they clearly weren't the top 50 players in the world, and now you have problems like these.
It is called the North American Star League. Why would you expect the top 50 players in the world to compete?
On June 09 2011 11:18 Dimagus wrote: But then the better player wins and advances, and all is right in the world?
The worst thing that can happen in a tournament is when the two best players in a tournament face eachother in the early rounds. The buildup to the finals makes it much more epic which is why tournaments exist in the first place. If not for this we would just see people streaming random ladder games that had no meaning behind them.
Open bracket will be very hard, I have no doubt the person who makes it through that is going to be among the best in the entire tournament.
So the winner of the first seed vs open winner wins and we move on. I don't see an issue here. Surely you're not trying to argue that the open winner will be vastly superior to seeds #2-15?
Actually a little known fact about the NCAA Basketball finals tournament. 65 teams are entered into the tournament and teams 64 and 65 play the ceremonial opening game that feeds into the match against the 1 seed. The theory behind it (and NASL) is that ASSUMING (yes i know flack will occur because no one likes assumptions) that the BEST players were in NASL, the top 16 finishers will be better than any open person who has to qualify separately. Therefore, that player is theoretically the weakest, and has to play the 1 seed. I agree that the open winner is going to be a beast no matter who it is, but i feel like the difference between playing the Open winnder and the 15th seed instead will not be a ginormous difference.
On June 09 2011 11:34 seiferoth10 wrote: So the winner of the first seed vs open winner wins and we move on. I don't see an issue here. Surely you're not trying to argue that the open winner will be vastly superior to seeds #2-15?
I will make the argument that the winner of a 1024 open tourney will likely be as good as, if not better than, then 15 seed.
I understand why NASL made the rule, but I truly believe there's an oversight in their decision.
My concern is guys like SeleCT, July, Morrow, etc... will end up facing guys like MMA, Losira, in the first round. If I were in the position to grab first, aka SeleCT, I would rather face someone in the lower seed as oppose to the Open bracket winner. So imo, the rule doesn't reward being first seed.
As a spectator, I would not be happy to see July vs someone like MMA in the first round, and see the first seed get knocked out...
I disagree with you, I think it's okay. If you watch football much, you would know that often times a wild card team that has to win the last 3 games of the season to get into the playoffs stands a good chance at making a run to win it all. Same with winning the open bracket. By the time you get to the top 16, all the players are great.
Now that you mentioned this, I actually agree. Open winner should get 6th seed (right after the 5 group winner) or maybe even 11th seed (right after 1st and 2nd of group). But I like the 6th seed more IMO.
On June 09 2011 11:28 Kraznaya wrote: This just underlines NASL's stupidity in general. They invited people like Artosis, Grubby, Painuser, etc. when they clearly weren't the top 50 players in the world, and now you have problems like these.
The only reason I brought this up is because I truly believe that MOST (i know not all) will agree that this rule is silly. NASL has made some bad decisions and they have done a fantastic job fixing all the issues. This is one they can fix before it happens!
Wont the top 16 part of the tourney be a live in person event? That means the odds of incredibly good Koreans attending will probably be low. It could very easily still happen I suppose, but the reason MMA, MC, Losira, Moon, and July were able to make it to MLG was because their expenses were paid for. Without the clash of the house or MLG-GOMtv partnership, the players would have to pay their own way to the live event and so I don't the division winners will have too much to fear from the open tourney. I could have this all wrong though, NASL finals information is confusing O.O
On June 09 2011 12:00 oniman999 wrote: Wont the top 16 part of the tourney be a live in person event?
Read the article. If you win the open tourney, all your expenses are paid. The Koreans have done poorly (relatively) in NASL because, as Idra pointed out, the latency disadvantage. They will make a stronger showing at the live event.
I think it is a valid point, but I'm not so sure NASL would make this change mid-season. Actually, they might hold their breath on changing it. Devil's advocate here.
After all, this is the first season of NASL, and the invites were sent to top players with the caveat that they would have to be playing online through the season and be available to travel for the finals. I can imagine with all the tournaments running, there may have been players not willing to take a punt on that kind of commitment.
But if competitive SC2 in the US keeps on expanding (and/or if latency between regions somehow becomes less of an issue), it may become the place to be for top tier pros, and then the ruling would make a lot more sense.
Every change to the league hurts its stability, so while a lot of changes make sense for now and the future, not every change that makes sense now does.
I don't see the big fuss. The best player gets the easiest first game. The lowest seeded player gets the hardest first game. If you didn't get an invite you are the lowest seed.
It wouldn't be fair to seed a player winning out of the open bracket above the player who were actually INVITED to play in the league.
On June 09 2011 12:00 oniman999 wrote: Wont the top 16 part of the tourney be a live in person event?
Read the article. If you win the open tourney, all your expenses are paid. The Koreans have done poorly (relatively) in NASL because, as Idra pointed out, the latency disadvantage. They will make a stronger showing at the live event.
Ahh didn't know about the expense paid trip. Yeah that changes everything haha
On June 09 2011 11:31 iNcontroL wrote: fantastic post kraznaya
Would you like to comment on the OP, who brings a valid point, instead of responding to trolls?
I agree 100% with the OP, the winner of the open bracket is certainly going to be a really good player, much better than the lower seeds. Right now it seems like you're punishing the #1 seeded player.
On June 09 2011 11:28 Kraznaya wrote: This just underlines NASL's stupidity in general. They invited people like Artosis, Grubby, Painuser, etc. when they clearly weren't the top 50 players in the world, and now you have problems like these.
Read NASL.
How does the "NA" part even apply as an argument when you already have Europeans and Asians playing in the league anyway. They were clearly poor choices (well, maybe not PainUser at the time) and chosen primarily for their star power rather than any merit of skill. There were most definitely better people that could have taken those spots from both the foreign and Korean communities.
I think this is a valid point. The motivation behind this kind of seeding is to pair the strongest player with the weakest player, the second strongest player with the second weakest player, and so on. As OP suggests, it's unlikely that the open tournament winner will be the weakest player. Indeed, it is very likely that a top player will make it through, so the seeding probably won't achieve its goal.
However, I also want to emphasize that I don't think this is some devastating issue for the league. It's kind of silly that this even needs to be said, but I think that this is a minor oversight for an otherwise well-designed tournament.
Not the smartest OP in the world....but you are supposed to assume that everyone in the NASL is the best. They are the 50 in NA or the world or whatever. Whoever wins that open bracket isn't going to be better than the top of the NASL. So therefore it's smart to put open bracket vs. top seed.
And the people bitching about Artosis, Grubby, Painuser, etc. Are you serious? I mean really now. Please read how the freaking tournament works before you start bitching about it. The bottom 16? or 20? or whatever do not make it into the next season. The weaker players will drop out and the stronger ones will come in.
On June 09 2011 11:31 iNcontroL wrote: fantastic post kraznaya
Would you like to comment on the OP, who brings a valid point, instead of responding to trolls?
I agree 100% with the OP, the winner of the open bracket is certainly going to be a really good player, much better than the lower seeds. Right now it seems like you're punishing the #1 seeded player.
Sometimes I don't think people read the username of the person they are replying to. :O
On June 09 2011 11:21 NExt wrote: standard tournament seed format??
#1 vs #32 #2 vs #31 ?? etc.. etc..
Did you read the OP? He's not arguing that fact. He's arguing his opinion that the open bracket winner will not be the weakest player in the pool.
On June 09 2011 11:34 seiferoth10 wrote: So the winner of the first seed vs open winner wins and we move on. I don't see an issue here. Surely you're not trying to argue that the open winner will be vastly superior to seeds #2-15?
On June 09 2011 11:28 Kraznaya wrote: This just underlines NASL's stupidity in general. They invited people like Artosis, Grubby, Painuser, etc. when they clearly weren't the top 50 players in the world, and now you have problems like these.
Disagree. I don't think they could have predicted the degree to which PainUser would have started to cast more than play, I think Grubby was a calculated risk who brought in a ton of WC fans, and I think it's hard to argue that Artosis wasn't a fan favorite. The premise was never truly for the participants to be the top fifty in the world. A balance was struck between the reality of who the target audience for the tournament was, who could get into the US easily for the finals, and who would show the best games. I think NASL did a pretty good job at that balance, and while the winner of the open bracket is likely to be stronger than the fifteenth finalist, there's certainly no guarantee. Each season will inevitably produce imperfect results--any single-elimination tournament is likely to result in more variance than double elim and so forth--but that's why there are multiple seasons.
On June 09 2011 12:06 SanguineS wrote: Standard tournament rules.
I don't see the big fuss. The best player gets the easiest first game. The lowest seeded player gets the hardest first game. If you didn't get an invite you are the lowest seed.
It wouldn't be fair to seed a player winning out of the open bracket above the player who were actually INVITED to play in the league.
No it's not standard tournament rules. Where on earth do you have a regular season to seed 15 players and then an open bracket for the 16th? The problem here is that there are good players that don't play in the NASL so the 16th player isn't necessarily the worst based off past results.
It could be Nestea for all we know. Anybody going up against Nestea (or say Thorzain) would not have the "easiest" game and I doubt the first seed would prefer it. It's kind of a gamble. It really depends on who is in the open bracket.
So you're saying that they should arbitrarily decide how good the open bracket winner is when he has zero results in the NASL? That makes absolutely no sense at all. Let's say for a second that MVP wins the open. I have seen MVP play the most inspired starcraft of anyone in the world. I have also seen him play fucking awful starcraft and lose to people worse than him. On what do I base my decision? You can either arbitrarily apply one random game and seed a player based on that or seed him based on how he performed in the league at hand. The obvious and only solution is to give the open bracket winner the 16th seed.
On June 09 2011 12:15 McKTenor13 wrote: Not the smartest OP in the world....but you are supposed to assume that everyone in the NASL is the best. They are the 50 in NA or the world or whatever. Whoever wins that open bracket isn't going to be better than the top of the NASL. So therefore it's smart to put open bracket vs. top seed.
And the people bitching about Artosis, Grubby, Painuser, etc. Are you serious? I mean really now. Please read how the freaking tournament works before you start bitching about it. The bottom 16? or 20? or whatever do not make it into the next season. The weaker players will drop out and the stronger ones will come in.
So there's nothing wrong with inviting "bad" players (instead of better players) because they won't make it into the next season anyway? Your post is very smart, yes >.<
On June 09 2011 12:15 sjschmidt93 wrote: I like the idea of letting the #1 seed pick his opponent, then the next highest seed pick his, and keep going until it's all over with.
I made a post about this point in the Q&A thread for NASL back in March. Its relevant to this discussion so I will post it here.
On March 22 2011 02:12 WGarrison wrote: Bracket and setup seem really nice. Only one thing bugs me about it, the open tournament spot in the finals is seeded 16th. I think it would be better if the top 10 (red) were 1-10 as they are, then the open winner (green) was seeded 11, then the 11-30 winners (blue) were 12-16.
A couple reasons for this.
1. You want to protect your top seed. The green seed could be anybody, a dark horse or anything. This seed will be much harder for the top seed to prepare for (less time as he is completely unknown until two weeks before), and could possibly be an unknown with little information about him. This is more dangerous for the top seed than lowest seed from blue would be.
2. There are to "Stories" you want to protect. You want to have the stories available for the champion top seed that crushes everything, and the story of the unlikely last minute underdog winning it all. When the top seed plays the open tournament winner first round, you kill one of your stories off the bat.
3. It is possible for top seed to hit the open tournament winner in the finals. This would be an amazing story. Remember the season that the open winner went 4-2 against the top seed in the finals. Well we wont have that opportunity with the current bracket.
4. Adds veiwer value to the 6-11 seed match. 1-16 already has veiwer value due to top seed. With the open winner in the 6-11 seed match it becomes more featured.
5. Seeding below the open tournament entry is a valid consequence for players who do not qualify for the championship through divisional seeding. Blue tournament matches are the ones competing for the final spots 11-16 and not making that means elimination. Its kinda weird to be playing for either 15+ seed or being knocked out, should be 16th and final spot or out. Blue is rightfully below green in this case.
6. It is possible for players who play well enough to garuntee that they will not have to play a random payer. One of the advantages now of placing 1st in your division is knowing the player you have to play against in match 1 in the championship. You have to be 2nd place in your division to have to play the green open winner.
Please consider seeding the green open player as 11th over the blue qualifiers 12-16. I think this will improve the otherwise brilliant bracket.
On June 09 2011 12:23 chasmofcrisis wrote: So you're saying that they should arbitrarily decide how good the open bracket winner is when he has zero results in the NASL? That makes absolutely no sense at all. Let's say for a second that MVP wins the open. I have seen MVP play the most inspired starcraft of anyone in the world. I have also seen him play fucking awful starcraft and lose to people worse than him. On what do I base my decision? You can either arbitrarily apply one random game and seed a player based on that or seed him based on how he performed in the league at hand. The obvious and only solution is to give the open bracket winner the 16th seed.
Have to agree with this guy. They can only go by what happened in the NASL and not some arbitrary decision about how good the open winner is compared to the other seeds. We could argue all day about where the open winner "deserves" to be, and those arguments would differ based on who the open winner was.
On June 09 2011 12:27 WGarrison wrote: I made a post about this point in the Q&A thread for NASL back in March. Its relevant to this discussion so I will post it here.
On March 22 2011 02:12 WGarrison wrote: Bracket and setup seem really nice. Only one thing bugs me about it, the open tournament spot in the finals is seeded 16th. I think it would be better if the top 10 (red) were 1-10 as they are, then the open winner (green) was seeded 11, then the 11-30 winners (blue) were 12-16.
A couple reasons for this.
1. You want to protect your top seed. The green seed could be anybody, a dark horse or anything. This seed will be much harder for the top seed to prepare for (less time as he is completely unknown until two weeks before), and could possibly be an unknown with little information about him. This is more dangerous for the top seed than lowest seed from blue would be.
2. There are to "Stories" you want to protect. You want to have the stories available for the champion top seed that crushes everything, and the story of the unlikely last minute underdog winning it all. When the top seed plays the open tournament winner first round, you kill one of your stories off the bat.
3. It is possible for top seed to hit the open tournament winner in the finals. This would be an amazing story. Remember the season that the open winner went 4-2 against the top seed in the finals. Well we wont have that opportunity with the current bracket.
4. Adds veiwer value to the 6-11 seed match. 1-16 already has veiwer value due to top seed. With the open winner in the 6-11 seed match it becomes more featured.
5. Seeding below the open tournament entry is a valid consequence for players who do not qualify for the championship through divisional seeding. Blue tournament matches are the ones competing for the final spots 11-16 and not making that means elimination. Its kinda weird to be playing for either 15+ seed or being knocked out, should be 16th and final spot or out. Blue is rightfully below green in this case.
6. It is possible for players who play well enough to garuntee that they will not have to play a random payer. One of the advantages now of placing 1st in your division is knowing the player you have to play against in match 1 in the championship. You have to be 2nd place in your division to have to play the green open winner.
Please consider seeding the green open player as 11th over the blue qualifiers 12-16. I think this will improve the otherwise brilliant bracket.
I also posted in the NASL Q&A thread maybe a week ago or something... The problem here is that however stupid the rule is, it's really not fair to change it once you have an idea of who the #1 seed will be and who is going to be in the open tournament. The tournament is only fair if the rules are fixed and not decided after you know who they'll effect. Dumb or not, they're stuck with this rule now.
On June 09 2011 12:27 WGarrison wrote: I made a post about this point in the Q&A thread for NASL back in March. Its relevant to this discussion so I will post it here.
On March 22 2011 02:12 WGarrison wrote: Bracket and setup seem really nice. Only one thing bugs me about it, the open tournament spot in the finals is seeded 16th. I think it would be better if the top 10 (red) were 1-10 as they are, then the open winner (green) was seeded 11, then the 11-30 winners (blue) were 12-16.
A couple reasons for this.
1. You want to protect your top seed. The green seed could be anybody, a dark horse or anything. This seed will be much harder for the top seed to prepare for (less time as he is completely unknown until two weeks before), and could possibly be an unknown with little information about him. This is more dangerous for the top seed than lowest seed from blue would be.
2. There are to "Stories" you want to protect. You want to have the stories available for the champion top seed that crushes everything, and the story of the unlikely last minute underdog winning it all. When the top seed plays the open tournament winner first round, you kill one of your stories off the bat.
3. It is possible for top seed to hit the open tournament winner in the finals. This would be an amazing story. Remember the season that the open winner went 4-2 against the top seed in the finals. Well we wont have that opportunity with the current bracket.
4. Adds veiwer value to the 6-11 seed match. 1-16 already has veiwer value due to top seed. With the open winner in the 6-11 seed match it becomes more featured.
5. Seeding below the open tournament entry is a valid consequence for players who do not qualify for the championship through divisional seeding. Blue tournament matches are the ones competing for the final spots 11-16 and not making that means elimination. Its kinda weird to be playing for either 15+ seed or being knocked out, should be 16th and final spot or out. Blue is rightfully below green in this case.
6. It is possible for players who play well enough to garuntee that they will not have to play a random payer. One of the advantages now of placing 1st in your division is knowing the player you have to play against in match 1 in the championship. You have to be 2nd place in your division to have to play the green open winner.
Please consider seeding the green open player as 11th over the blue qualifiers 12-16. I think this will improve the otherwise brilliant bracket.
I also posted in the NASL Q&A thread maybe a week ago or something... The problem here is that however stupid the rule is, it's really not fair to change it once you have an idea of who the #1 seed will be and who is going to be in the open tournament. The tournament is only fair if the rules are fixed and not decided after you know who they'll effect. Dumb or not, they're stuck with this rule now.
Yeah, I was advocating to change it before the league started, it might be harsh to change it now. As far as the players are concerned it shouldn't make a huge difference, they should be prepared to have to beat anyone at anytime.
I'm only worried about the possibility of missed marketing/excitement opportunities. My storyline and viewer value points I feel are the strongest.
According to the article, the the first seed in NASL will face the open bracket winner.
Am I the only one who thinks this is a bad choice??? Typically, the first seed faces the weakest player. But I actually think the open bracket winner will be one of the strongest players, if not the strongest.
Imagine if MMA, Bomber, Thorzain, etc... signs up for the open tournament. In my opinion it is better to NOT be first seed because of this.
Anyone else agree with this and think the rules need to be re-evaluated? Or am I misunderstanding something?
I agree. Not sure what the correct decision would be though. Would've liked to see a group system rather than the single elimination bracket (correct me if that's wrong).
There are a lot of things about the NASL format that don't make any sense. Actually, that's true for a lot of different leagues and tournaments in the scene right now. I don't know why organizers feel the need to design these byzantine systems when a straightforward league format with a plain old regular bracket for the playoffs will do.
Well, thing is, the way it is right now, the top seed will either be Select or another korean like July, so I don't really see how exactly this is unfair for the top seeded player.
byzantine systems when a straightforward league format with a plain old regular bracket for the playoffs will do.
Funny thing is it just goes back to people complain no matter what. In the more straight forward systems people often feel some of the better players can get eliminated to easily, or that seeding isn't always easy and you get good players matching up to early.
Then when they go to systems like the NASL or MLG are using which try to allow the cream of the crop to rise to the top over time, people complain it is confusing, to long, to many games, to easy to stay on the top, to hard to get into the top, etc.
People are just never happy.
The participants all know the setup going in, and this is the layout. It can always be reevaluated or changed, but seems to me this thread could simply have gone into the NASL suggestions thread.
On June 09 2011 12:24 carloselcoco wrote: On June 09 2011 11:28 jalstar wrote: I think it should be:
1-10: Top 2 of each division 11: Open Bracket winner 12-16: Wild Card Playoff winners
------- That is exactly how I think it should be too!
Yea this sounds good.
The problem I have with seeding the open winner #11 is that #11 faces #6 in the standard bracket. Why does #6 have to face the open winner? He'd argue that #15 is the one who most deserves to face the open player because #15 did the worst during pool play.
So we'd seed the open winner into #1 to face the previous #15, but now #16 because it pushed everyone down. The previous #1 would argue that he deserves to play the previous #15 who did the worst in pool play.
My point: there will be complaints no matter where you put the open winner. The most logical place to put the open winner is #16 because by the invite structure, they're trying to invite the top 50 players in the world to the league, so the open winner should theoretically be #51 or greater in the world. Of course, that's impossible to invite the top 50 players in the world because player rating is incredibly arbitrary, but putting the open winner as #16 makes the most sense in theory.
The Koreans still have to play cross server. And seeing their results, I would rather play one of them than a very good player that is playing in NA. Because honestly, all these players are able to take games off of each other
On June 09 2011 13:16 Halcyondaze wrote: The Koreans still have to play cross server. And seeing their results, I would rather play one of them than a very good player that is playing in NA. Because honestly, all these players are able to take games off of each other
The seeds are for the grand final which is a "LAN" event in Ontario.
You can't just pick and choose match ups. Brackets are based purely off results. Could a weaker player be higher seeded than a stronger player based off their groups? Yes, but thats just the nature of the beast.
On June 09 2011 11:35 [Silverflame] wrote: I think Jalstars thought is worth thinking about! It would be nice to see that idea being discussed by the NASL staff.
On June 09 2011 11:28 jalstar wrote: I think it should be:
1-10: Top 2 of each division 11: Open Bracket winner 12-16: Wild Card Playoff winners
That is exactly how I think it should be too!
Yea this sounds good.
+1. The open bracket winner will surely be a top contender in the tournament. Think MLG-level open bracket, but quadruple the player pool and add a couple rounds so that only one (the best of the best) emerges. Also, since the 1st place prize is $50k, the tournament will likely attract top pros not already in the tournament (Europeans: Kas, Thorzain, Dimaga?? etc. Koreans: MVP, MKP, Alicia?? etc.)
On June 09 2011 12:27 WGarrison wrote: I made a post about this point in the Q&A thread for NASL back in March. Its relevant to this discussion so I will post it here.
On March 22 2011 02:12 WGarrison wrote: Bracket and setup seem really nice. Only one thing bugs me about it, the open tournament spot in the finals is seeded 16th. I think it would be better if the top 10 (red) were 1-10 as they are, then the open winner (green) was seeded 11, then the 11-30 winners (blue) were 12-16.
A couple reasons for this.
1. You want to protect your top seed. The green seed could be anybody, a dark horse or anything. This seed will be much harder for the top seed to prepare for (less time as he is completely unknown until two weeks before), and could possibly be an unknown with little information about him. This is more dangerous for the top seed than lowest seed from blue would be.
2. There are to "Stories" you want to protect. You want to have the stories available for the champion top seed that crushes everything, and the story of the unlikely last minute underdog winning it all. When the top seed plays the open tournament winner first round, you kill one of your stories off the bat.
3. It is possible for top seed to hit the open tournament winner in the finals. This would be an amazing story. Remember the season that the open winner went 4-2 against the top seed in the finals. Well we wont have that opportunity with the current bracket.
4. Adds veiwer value to the 6-11 seed match. 1-16 already has veiwer value due to top seed. With the open winner in the 6-11 seed match it becomes more featured.
5. Seeding below the open tournament entry is a valid consequence for players who do not qualify for the championship through divisional seeding. Blue tournament matches are the ones competing for the final spots 11-16 and not making that means elimination. Its kinda weird to be playing for either 15+ seed or being knocked out, should be 16th and final spot or out. Blue is rightfully below green in this case.
6. It is possible for players who play well enough to garuntee that they will not have to play a random payer. One of the advantages now of placing 1st in your division is knowing the player you have to play against in match 1 in the championship. You have to be 2nd place in your division to have to play the green open winner.
Please consider seeding the green open player as 11th over the blue qualifiers 12-16. I think this will improve the otherwise brilliant bracket.
On June 09 2011 13:21 RmoteCntrld wrote: You can't just pick and choose match ups. Brackets are based purely off results. Could a weaker player be higher seeded than a stronger player based off their groups? Yes, but thats just the nature of the beast.
On June 09 2011 12:06 SanguineS wrote: Standard tournament rules.
I don't see the big fuss. The best player gets the easiest first game. The lowest seeded player gets the hardest first game. If you didn't get an invite you are the lowest seed.
It wouldn't be fair to seed a player winning out of the open bracket above the player who were actually INVITED to play in the league.
The point is that the Open Bracket Winner is probably better than the #15 seed (and probably a few others at the very least), so the #1 seed will NOT be getting the easiest first game.
On June 09 2011 13:21 RmoteCntrld wrote: You can't just pick and choose match ups. Brackets are based purely off results. Could a weaker player be higher seeded than a stronger player based off their groups? Yes, but thats just the nature of the beast.
boom!
It's not a typical bracket, though, with an open tournament winner thrown into the mix. Do you want to lose viewers after a first round matchup pins what could be the top two contenders for 1st prize against each other, one obviously getting eliminated? Probably not, and it may not be possible to change the rule anymore this season, but please consider changing the format for subsequent seasons .
On June 09 2011 13:40 GhostFall wrote: It would nice if they could set up some sort of system like MLG where it is double elimination. like seeds 1-10 or 1-15 would get the luxury of losing 1 set, but still being in the tournament because they went through the regular season of the NASL, while the open bracket 16 seed does not have the luxury of double elimination. This is offset by the fact that he didn't have to go through the NASL regular season, and can participate in the NASL regular season.
Think of the time investment. The people going through the open bracket play games for a week or a weekend or whatever, for 50,000 dollars. The people in the regular season had to play and prepare for 3 months.
And a good point is made that being 1st seed brings a disadvantage in being hard to practice for. The 16th seed can be any of the three races. Everyone else is rather set, and you have all this time to figure out what race you have to practice against.
That just seems cruel! The open tourney winner has to win, what, like 10 BO3 single-elimination series in a row just to make it to the championship bracket.
It would nice if they could set up some sort of system like MLG where it is double elimination. like seeds 1-10 or 1-15 would get the luxury of losing 1 set, but still being in the tournament because they went through the regular season of the NASL, while the open bracket 16 seed does not have the luxury of double elimination. This is offset by the fact that he didn't have to go through the NASL regular season, and can participate in the NASL regular season.
Think of the time investment. The people going through the open bracket play games for a week or a weekend or whatever, for 50,000 dollars. The people in the regular season had to play and prepare for 3 months.
And a good point is made that being 1st seed brings a disadvantage in being hard to practice for. The 16th seed can be any of the three races. Everyone else is rather set, and you have all this time to figure out what race you have to practice against.
On June 09 2011 12:24 carloselcoco wrote: On June 09 2011 11:28 jalstar wrote: I think it should be:
1-10: Top 2 of each division 11: Open Bracket winner 12-16: Wild Card Playoff winners
------- That is exactly how I think it should be too!
Yea this sounds good.
The problem I have with seeding the open winner #11 is that #11 faces #6 in the standard bracket. Why does #6 have to face the open winner? He'd argue that #15 is the one who most deserves to face the open player because #15 did the worst during pool play.
So we'd seed the open winner into #1 to face the previous #15, but now #16 because it pushed everyone down. The previous #1 would argue that he deserves to play the previous #15 who did the worst in pool play.
My point: there will be complaints no matter where you put the open winner. The most logical place to put the open winner is #16 because by the invite structure, they're trying to invite the top 50 players in the world to the league, so the open winner should theoretically be #51 or greater in the world. Of course, that's impossible to invite the top 50 players in the world because player rating is incredibly arbitrary, but putting the open winner as #16 makes the most sense in theory.
Justifying that seed #6 should play against the open bracket winner can be a bit archaic but I'm gonna try it anyway.
The championship seeding would loo like this 1-5 is the division leaders, 6-10 is the runner ups, 11 is the open bracket, and 12-16 is the last players that clawed their way in.
1-5 seeds versus 12-16 becomes 5 matches of the top leaders versus the guys that just barely made it. Winning your division guarantees you a game against the "weakest" players from the league. 6th place is the first seed that does not win a division. He does not need to be offered the same guarantee. Just because of the way the brackets work there should be no reason for 7th-10th to face the open bracket winner because the divisional runner ups should rightly be seeded higher.
Also for hype purposes the middle seeded matches are the hardest to hype 1-5 seeds will have good hype because there is the stories about how they won their division and also their opponents barely getting in. 6-11 is middle pack players, 3 games that are harder to hype. If the open bracket winner is 11th seed then 6 vs 11 is easier to hype, reducing the middle pack games down to 2. If NASL is lucky and has a couple key players show up in 7-10 they have a tournament that hypes itself.
On June 09 2011 13:21 RmoteCntrld wrote: You can't just pick and choose match ups. Brackets are based purely off results. Could a weaker player be higher seeded than a stronger player based off their groups? Yes, but thats just the nature of the beast.
boom!
It's not a typical bracket, though, with an open tournament winner thrown into the mix. Do you want to lose viewers after a first round matchup pins what could be the top two contenders for 1st prize against each other, one obviously getting eliminated? Probably not, and it may not be possible to change the rule anymore this season, but please consider changing the format for subsequent seasons .
I doubt viewers would stop watching if the top two players played each other in the first round. I cant think of anyone who would think along the lines of "yeah idra plays MC in the first round so im not gonna watch the rest of this tournament"
OP has a point. The 50 NASL players ate not the best 50 players in the world (please don't take this as a complain/whine, it is what it is - players were invited based on localition, aplication, visa availability, popularity, past fame etc, all valid choices btw, but they do not reflect pure skill). So whoever comes from open bracket could very likely be a much better player than the 15h qualified player. More than likely, actually, by looking at the current sc2 world scene.
A more coherent choice would be letting the top seeds pick their poison, but I agree that changing rules mid-season is an awful idea. Maybe for next season.
On June 09 2011 11:17 Kralic wrote: I would assume anyone who makes the top 16 in a big tournament like this would be a tough opponent no matter what...
Lol couldn't have said it better. So to the OP - ya everyone in the top 16 is going to be a monster of a player anyway, meaning it does not matter.
You can watch the results of the TLOpens to have an idea on which kind of players will qualify (thorzain, kas, perhaps a korean ?) I kinda agree that placing him against the first seed directly will be a little buzz killer.
It would be cool if the top guy in each division gets to pick his opponent and then the rest of the spots are filled up by rank.
That sounds cool in theory, but players can make some really strange picks. You can get strange situations such as maybe the number 1 seed picks the number 6 because of some weird metagame or racial matchup reasons. Straight seeded seems way less complicated and is a sound method.
On June 09 2011 13:21 RmoteCntrld wrote: You can't just pick and choose match ups. Brackets are based purely off results. Could a weaker player be higher seeded than a stronger player based off their groups? Yes, but thats just the nature of the beast.
boom!
It's not a typical bracket, though, with an open tournament winner thrown into the mix. Do you want to lose viewers after a first round matchup pins what could be the top two contenders for 1st prize against each other, one obviously getting eliminated? Probably not, and it may not be possible to change the rule anymore this season, but please consider changing the format for subsequent seasons .
I doubt viewers would stop watching if the top two players played each other in the first round. I cant think of anyone who would think along the lines of "yeah idra plays MC in the first round so im not gonna watch the rest of this tournament"
True, people are still going to watch. But (going by your example), wouldn't it be much more epic and draw more viewers if IdrA - MC occurred in the finals?
It would be cool if the top guy in each division gets to pick his opponent and then the rest of the spots are filled up by rank.
That sounds cool in theory, but players can make some really strange picks. You can get strange situations such as maybe the number 1 seed picks the number 6 because of some weird metagame or racial matchup reasons. Straight seeded seems way less complicated and is a sound method.
Why does it matter who they pick? The important thing is that there's a proper reward for being a higher seed.
NASL should have each of the division winners (5) pick their first-round opponent. The other 3 matches could be picked randomly or something. Would reward division winners, enable some rivalries, and would mean that the guy who actually does the best gets a matchup he actually wants.
well normal tournaments do this kind of stuff because they ALREADY invite the best players in the world, regardless of region (like a tennis tournament). so you can't just really go HERP DERP OPEN PLAYER SHOULD HAVE LOWEST SEED.
It would be cool if the top guy in each division gets to pick his opponent and then the rest of the spots are filled up by rank.
That sounds cool in theory, but players can make some really strange picks. You can get strange situations such as maybe the number 1 seed picks the number 6 because of some weird metagame or racial matchup reasons. Straight seeded seems way less complicated and is a sound method.
I disagree on both points. It's hardly complicated, and it rewards the guys who come top, which is IMO fairer than the possibility of the #1 guy having to play Thorzain or Dimaga 1st round.
On June 09 2011 13:21 RmoteCntrld wrote: You can't just pick and choose match ups. Brackets are based purely off results. Could a weaker player be higher seeded than a stronger player based off their groups? Yes, but thats just the nature of the beast.
This completely misses the point. The "nature of the beast" is that things are probabilistic and so we can expect some players to perform better or worse than is representative of their "true" skill level. In that sense, of course, you cannot just select matches based on how good the players are -- you have to respect the results, because that's the only objective measure of how good they are.
What you can do, however, is design a system that is most likely to achieve the desired result. In this case, the desired result is that the best player faces the worst player, as determined by the league play. Now, this is where you (and evidently iNcontroL) want to say "Ha! Well, that's exactly what it's based on!" The reason this doesn't work in this situation (while it does work in a league with a fixed pool of teams, such as the NHL) is that the tournament is invite-based, so there is effectively no comparison between the winner of the open tournament and any of the players seeded through league play.
This is a somewhat long-winded way of saying that it's reasonable to expect the winner of the open tournament to be better than the 15th seed into the championship bracket. It's a bad design for the tournament because the incentive to be the first seed has actually been removed. Assuming we accept that the winner of the open tournament is probably better than the 15th seed (NB: not just that it's possible, but that it's likely) then we're creating a perverse incentive by using such a system.
I'll add one final note: I don't think this should be changed for this season of the NASL. The rules have already been set, and I don't think they should be changed except in the case of an exceptionally disruptive rule, which I don't think this qualifies as. And I'll add once more that I think that this is merely a minor flaw in an otherwise well-designed league format.
I guess the real question is "how do we know the winner of the open bracket is the worst player of the 16 people and thus get the 16th seed?" I guess there isn't an objective way to find out.
On June 09 2011 14:04 VPCursed wrote: dunno why they would do this.. rofl.. who the fuck would want to be top seed in the NASL?
Apparently, some guy named Select, another called Julyzerg and some Squirtle do. I don't know man, I wish they were all like you and liked the easy way out instead of y'know, actually enjoying some competition, cause in the end, it is not at all what the NASL is, a competition.
It would be cool if the top guy in each division gets to pick his opponent and then the rest of the spots are filled up by rank.
That sounds cool in theory, but players can make some really strange picks. You can get strange situations such as maybe the number 1 seed picks the number 6 because of some weird metagame or racial matchup reasons. Straight seeded seems way less complicated and is a sound method.
I disagree on both points. It's hardly complicated, and it rewards the guys who come top, which is IMO fairer than the possibility of the #1 guy having to play Thorzain or Dimaga 1st round.
Read his responses. He's arguing that the open player should be seeded 11th.
It would be cool if the top guy in each division gets to pick his opponent and then the rest of the spots are filled up by rank.
That sounds cool in theory, but players can make some really strange picks. You can get strange situations such as maybe the number 1 seed picks the number 6 because of some weird metagame or racial matchup reasons. Straight seeded seems way less complicated and is a sound method.
I disagree on both points. It's hardly complicated, and it rewards the guys who come top, which is IMO fairer than the possibility of the #1 guy having to play Thorzain or Dimaga 1st round.
Its complicated because you have to go through a process of contacting players and getting selections and so on. You have to do it early so that the selected opponents can prepare. Way more work than plug and chug brackets in 1 minute.
Also the top seeded player has more time to prepare his matchup than his opponent. He knows ahead of time who he is going to pick but the picked player has no idea. It creates strange things.
And yes, I do advocate that top seed does not play open bracket winner.
On June 09 2011 14:04 VPCursed wrote: dunno why they would do this.. rofl.. who the fuck would want to be top seed in the NASL?
Apparently, some guy named Select, another called Julyzerg and some Squirtle do. I don't know man, I wish they were all like you and liked the easy way out instead of y'know, actually enjoying some competition, cause in the end, it is not at all what the NASL is, a competition.
Keep in mind MONEY is on the line. If someone told you, you would be facing Bomber if you seed first or will face kiwikaki if you seed 2nd...who would you pick? I'd rather lose to Bomber in the finals than in the first round. The prize money is vastly different.
On June 09 2011 13:21 RmoteCntrld wrote: You can't just pick and choose match ups. Brackets are based purely off results. Could a weaker player be higher seeded than a stronger player based off their groups? Yes, but thats just the nature of the beast.
This completely misses the point. The "nature of the beast" is that things are probabilistic and so we can expect some players to perform better or worse than is representative of their "true" skill level. In that sense, of course, you cannot just select matches based on how good the players are -- you have to respect the results, because that's the only objective measure of how good they are.
What you can do, however, is design a system that is most likely to achieve the desired result. In this case, the desired result is that the best player faces the worst player, as determined by the league play. Now, this is where you (and evidently iNcontroL) want to say "Ha! Well, that's exactly what it's based on!" The reason this doesn't work in this situation (while it does work in a league with a fixed pool of teams, such as the NHL) is that the tournament is invite-based, so there is effectively no comparison between the winner of the open tournament and any of the players seeded through league play.
This is a somewhat long-winded way of saying that it's reasonable to expect the winner of the open tournament to be better than the 15th seed into the championship bracket. It's a bad design for the tournament because the incentive to be the first seed has actually been removed. Assuming we accept that the winner of the open tournament is probably better than the 15th seed (NB: not just that it's possible, but that it's likely) then we're creating a perverse incentive by using such a system.
I'll add one final note: I don't think this should be changed for this season of the NASL. The rules have already been set, and I don't think they should be changed except in the case of an exceptionally disruptive rule, which I don't think this qualifies as. And I'll add once more that I think that this is merely a minor flaw in an otherwise well-designed league format.
Good points, I agree with you entirely.
Furthermore since it is reasonable to assume that the open bracket winner is stronger than 15th seed, 11th seed is a logical place to go. 1-10th seed is a set block of seeds, and 12-16th would also be a set, 11th flows nicely.
One of the biggest discrepencies with this is that the top 16 are strong... but players 11 -> 15 are STUPIDLY good due to where they are going to be placed.
Xeries showed the bracket makeup for NASL if the league ended last week.
The players most likely to win and get into the NASL playoffs from those groups were:
- Zenio - Idra - Kiwikaki - MC - Nada
With seeds being:
11: Zenio 12: Idra 13: Kiwikaki 14: Nada 15: MC
What you are suggesting is that the #1 seed play vs MC instead of the open round winner... or play vs somone like Zenio or Idra instead of the open tournament winner.
All of the players in the top 15 + open are ridiculously good... It doesn't matter if the open round winner is seeded 6th, 11th, or 16th, everyone will be playing a ridiculously talented and difficult to face opponent.
- - - - - - -
One of the biggest flaws with the idea of having the open tournament player seeded higher than 16th is the assumption that all groups were made equal. This is not true. As such, players who are ranked 11 - 20 are done so through wins and points, but that does not reflect 100% of the story.
Players from group 2 compared to those in group 5 have a vastly different skill level as a whole. Where some players who are in the top 30 are on a whole different level than others (ex. Idra compared to Moman, or MC vs Cruncher.)
The seeds from 11 - 15 will be some of the strongest players in the NASL simply due to how the divisions were created. They were not created equal, and when MC will most likely be the 15th seed for the NASL, you know something is a little messed up.
On June 09 2011 14:04 VPCursed wrote: dunno why they would do this.. rofl.. who the fuck would want to be top seed in the NASL?
Apparently, some guy named Select, another called Julyzerg and some Squirtle do. I don't know man, I wish they were all like you and liked the easy way out instead of y'know, actually enjoying some competition, cause in the end, it is not at all what the NASL is, a competition.
Keep in mind MONEY is on the line. If someone told you, you would be facing Bomber if you seed first or will face kiwikaki if you seed 2nd...who would you pick? I'd rather lose to Bomber in the finals than in the first round. The prize money is vastly different.
It's not about who would I pick, but since you asked that, I'd go with Bomber, simply because I think he'd be a better match to me. Again though, it is not about who would I pick. Also, I'd rather not lose to Bomber at all but that's just me, I don't play to lose.
I guess one could say your point is understandable as now in GSL ST we have someone like TheBest at the R16 whereas if GSL had done nitpicking and manual matches, we could only have MVP vs MC/NesTea until the finals and players like theBest, Junwi and Legalmind go out at the Ro64, but alas, EVERY event format has its pros and cons. There is NO perfect format. But that's besides the point.
On June 09 2011 14:39 Insanious wrote: One of the biggest discrepencies with this is that the top 16 are strong... but players 11 -> 15 are STUPIDLY good due to where they are going to be placed.
Xeries showed the bracket makeup for NASL if the league ended last week.
The players most likely to win and get into the NASL playoffs from those groups were:
- Zenio - Idra - Kiwikaki - MC - Nada
With seeds being:
11: Zenio 12: Idra 13: Kiwikaki 14: Nada 15: MC
What you are suggesting is that the #1 seed play vs MC instead of the open round winner... or play vs somone like Zenio or Idra instead of the open tournament winner.
All of the players in the top 15 + open are ridiculously good... It doesn't matter if the open round winner is seeded 6th, 11th, or 16th, everyone will be playing a ridiculously talented and difficult to face opponent.
- - - - - - -
One of the biggest flaws with the idea of having the open tournament player seeded higher than 16th is the assumption that all groups were made equal. This is not true. As such, players who are ranked 11 - 20 are done so through wins and points, but that does not reflect 100% of the story.
Players from group 2 compared to those in group 5 have a vastly different skill level as a whole. Where some players who are in the top 30 are on a whole different level than others (ex. Idra compared to Moman, or MC vs Cruncher.)
The seeds from 11 - 15 will be some of the strongest players in the NASL simply due to how the divisions were created. They were not created equal, and when MC will most likely be the 15th seed for the NASL, you know something is a little messed up.
MC would be seeded 15th (or 16th by my philosophy) because of his performance in NASL. He started out the season going 0-3. The open tournament winner by necessity cannot start out 0-3 or even 0-1. There are a lot of good players in the open tournament that weren't in NASL season 1. The open winner has to beat all of them in sudden deaths, no losing.
I am comfortable seeding the open tournament winner higher than MC and accept all of the ramifications that result.
On June 09 2011 14:52 Probe1 wrote: Pretty amusing to see people complain about the NASL then watch it. Then complain. Then watch it again.
I don't see who is complaining. We suggest change for the betterment of NASL because we love it and support it fully. We want the best, so we ask for it. Its all about the constructive criticism.
I love how TL'ers are panicking about something that hasn't actually happened yet. So what if the 16th seed is arguably better than the 15th? All 16 players are really, really good.
This happens in every other major sport, constantly. A team might have an easier schedule than another, and be seeded higher. There's no tournament system in sports that is 'fair' or 'scientifically accurate'.
It's not the end of the world.
Besides, Select has put himself in a situation where he can control his own destiny. There's nothing stopping him from phoning in a game and control the seeding. If he wanted he could drop his next game, and drop to second in his division if he thought it gave him an advantage in the playoffs.
On June 09 2011 14:39 Insanious wrote: One of the biggest discrepencies with this is that the top 16 are strong... but players 11 -> 15 are STUPIDLY good due to where they are going to be placed.
Xeries showed the bracket makeup for NASL if the league ended last week.
The players most likely to win and get into the NASL playoffs from those groups were:
- Zenio - Idra - Kiwikaki - MC - Nada
With seeds being:
11: Zenio 12: Idra 13: Kiwikaki 14: Nada 15: MC
What you are suggesting is that the #1 seed play vs MC instead of the open round winner... or play vs somone like Zenio or Idra instead of the open tournament winner.
All of the players in the top 15 + open are ridiculously good... It doesn't matter if the open round winner is seeded 6th, 11th, or 16th, everyone will be playing a ridiculously talented and difficult to face opponent.
- - - - - - -
One of the biggest flaws with the idea of having the open tournament player seeded higher than 16th is the assumption that all groups were made equal. This is not true. As such, players who are ranked 11 - 20 are done so through wins and points, but that does not reflect 100% of the story.
Players from group 2 compared to those in group 5 have a vastly different skill level as a whole. Where some players who are in the top 30 are on a whole different level than others (ex. Idra compared to Moman, or MC vs Cruncher.)
The seeds from 11 - 15 will be some of the strongest players in the NASL simply due to how the divisions were created. They were not created equal, and when MC will most likely be the 15th seed for the NASL, you know something is a little messed up.
People don't realize this, but every single SC tournament is bad in terms of trying to eliminate randomness. It's actually something bothers me quite a bit (may be I'm obsessive.)
They should simply have everyone play a match against everyone and then make a bracket based on that. Or simply have table system with no playoffs like European soccer.
On June 09 2011 14:11 don_kyuhote wrote: I guess the real question is "how do we know the winner of the open bracket is the worst player of the 16 people and thus get the 16th seed?" I guess there isn't an objective way to find out.
That's exactly the right question to ask. If the tournament field was already the best 50 players, then anyone who got through the open tournament would be certain to be the 16 seed. However, because of the huge flux in talent pools currently, and the NASL field not including all the best players already, there is the risk that the open tournament is similar to MLG (which gave us July).
Here are a couple of scenarios that illustrate the range of possibilities available: ~Open tournament is won by some mid-masters player who got really hot/had a couple handy cheeses. Such a player's success is temporary, no question he/she is the worst rated player of the 16.
~Open tournament is won by a pro. There's a huge range of professional gamers who weren't in the NASL league play, and they include a number who could easily be considered the best player in the finals (a few off the top of my head: Bomber, MMA, somebody from IM, a ton of other Koreans, Jinro, Huk, ThorZain, White-Ra, Dimaga). So now it's entirely possible that the best two players would have to play each other in the first round! [disclaimer: I have absolutely no idea who's playing in the open tournament. All names above are for illustration only.]
tl;dr: As long as you can't guarantee that the best 50 players interested in the NASL played in the league months, you're not going to guarantee that the open winning is actually the lowest seed.
On June 09 2011 15:03 Defacer wrote: I love how TL'ers are panicking about something that hasn't actually happened yet. So what if the 16th seed is arguably better than the 15th? All 16 players are really, really good.
This happens in every other major sport, constantly. A team might have an easier schedule than another, and be seeded higher. There's tournament system in sports that is not 'fair' or 'scientifically accurate'. but it's not the end of the world.
Besides, if someone like Select was soooooooo good, and was capable of controlling his own destiny, they're nothing stopping him from phoning in a game and control the seeding. If he wanted he could drop his next game, and drop to second in his division if he thought it gave him an advantage in the playoffs.
If players do not always have a motive to win, either a fluke has occurred, there is underhanded dealings, or the tournament is set up poorly. All of these are bad and two of them are preventable, tournament setup being the easiest to control.
Our suggestion is a result that we think the tournament is not set up optimally and we would like to see a small change.
On June 09 2011 14:11 don_kyuhote wrote: I guess the real question is "how do we know the winner of the open bracket is the worst player of the 16 people and thus get the 16th seed?" I guess there isn't an objective way to find out.
That's exactly the right question to ask. If the tournament field was already the best 50 players, then anyone who got through the open tournament would be certain to be the 16 seed. However, because of the huge flux in talent pools currently, and the NASL field not including all the best players already, there is the risk that the open tournament is similar to MLG (which gave us July).
Here are a couple of scenarios that illustrate the range of possibilities available: ~Open tournament is won by some mid-masters player who got really hot/had a couple handy cheeses. Such a player's success is temporary, no question he/she is the worst rated player of the 16.
~Open tournament is won by a pro. There's a huge range of professional gamers who weren't in the NASL league play, and they include a number who could easily be considered the best player in the finals (a few off the top of my head: Bomber, MMA, somebody from IM, a ton of other Koreans, Jinro, Huk, ThorZain, White-Ra, Dimaga). So now it's entirely possible that the best two players would have to play each other in the first round! [disclaimer: I have absolutely no idea who's playing in the open tournament. All names above are for illustration only.]
tl;dr: As long as you can't guarantee that the best 50 players interested in the NASL played in the league months, you're not going to guarantee that the open winning is actually the lowest seed.
This open winner is indeed very unpredictable. Unpredictable is a bad concept when you pair them with your top seed. By seeding the open winner as 11th you protect your top seed from the unpredictable outcome. Whether or not the open winner is 11th or 16th in skill doesn't matter, you are protecting your top seeds from the worst case scenario.
It would be bad, but possible for the open winner to play the top seed in the first round and the open winner be favored in the matchup. We care a lot less who is favored in 6th vs 11th. Also, the top seed is definitely favored over lowest seed from league play from known results.
On June 09 2011 14:11 don_kyuhote wrote: I guess the real question is "how do we know the winner of the open bracket is the worst player of the 16 people and thus get the 16th seed?" I guess there isn't an objective way to find out.
That's exactly the right question to ask. If the tournament field was already the best 50 players, then anyone who got through the open tournament would be certain to be the 16 seed. However, because of the huge flux in talent pools currently, and the NASL field not including all the best players already, there is the risk that the open tournament is similar to MLG (which gave us July).
Here are a couple of scenarios that illustrate the range of possibilities available: ~Open tournament is won by some mid-masters player who got really hot/had a couple handy cheeses. Such a player's success is temporary, no question he/she is the worst rated player of the 16.
~Open tournament is won by a pro. There's a huge range of professional gamers who weren't in the NASL league play, and they include a number who could easily be considered the best player in the finals (a few off the top of my head: Bomber, MMA, somebody from IM, a ton of other Koreans, Jinro, Huk, ThorZain, White-Ra, Dimaga). So now it's entirely possible that the best two players would have to play each other in the first round! [disclaimer: I have absolutely no idea who's playing in the open tournament. All names above are for illustration only.]
tl;dr: As long as you can't guarantee that the best 50 players interested in the NASL played in the league months, you're not going to guarantee that the open winning is actually the lowest seed.
This open winner is indeed very unpredictable. Unpredictable is a bad concept when you pair them with your top seed. By seeding the open winner as 11th you protect your top seed from the unpredictable outcome. Whether or not the open winner is 11th or 16th in skill doesn't matter, you are protecting your top seeds from the worst case scenario.
It would be bad, but possible for the open winner to play the top seed and be favored in the matchup. We care a lot less who is favored in 6th vs 11th.
Definitely: the more middling the open champion's seed, the safer.
However, I actually think that the biggest strength of MLG was the structure of the loser's bracket. Those who didn't show so well had to prove themselves more often, but everyone was pretty much on the same level. Until talent and game balance becomes less volatile and you can implement a system like OSL, it's probably the best way to do it.
You can only base seeds off of known information. If MVP flew out to compete in the open bracket of MLG anahiem he would be seeded as an unknown as he has no rank points or past MLG history. They can't seed based off the fact that he is a two time GSL winner. This is even more clear when you are seeding not only someone who has no NASL experience but you dont even know who it is. The only place they could be seeded is as the bottom seed as that is their seed based off of past NASL result.
On June 09 2011 15:25 Tantaburs wrote: You can only base seeds off of known information. If MVP flew out to compete in the open bracket of MLG anahiem he would be seeded as an unknown as he has no rank points or past MLG history. They can't seed based off the fact that he is a two time GSL winner. This is even more clear when you are seeding not only someone who has no NASL experience but you dont even know who it is. The only place they could be seeded is as the bottom seed as that is their seed based off of past NASL result.
But you can have a tournament format that still protects the higher seeds from potential deathtrap open champs.
On June 09 2011 14:11 don_kyuhote wrote: I guess the real question is "how do we know the winner of the open bracket is the worst player of the 16 people and thus get the 16th seed?" I guess there isn't an objective way to find out.
That's exactly the right question to ask. If the tournament field was already the best 50 players, then anyone who got through the open tournament would be certain to be the 16 seed. However, because of the huge flux in talent pools currently, and the NASL field not including all the best players already, there is the risk that the open tournament is similar to MLG (which gave us July).
Here are a couple of scenarios that illustrate the range of possibilities available: ~Open tournament is won by some mid-masters player who got really hot/had a couple handy cheeses. Such a player's success is temporary, no question he/she is the worst rated player of the 16.
~Open tournament is won by a pro. There's a huge range of professional gamers who weren't in the NASL league play, and they include a number who could easily be considered the best player in the finals (a few off the top of my head: Bomber, MMA, somebody from IM, a ton of other Koreans, Jinro, Huk, ThorZain, White-Ra, Dimaga). So now it's entirely possible that the best two players would have to play each other in the first round! [disclaimer: I have absolutely no idea who's playing in the open tournament. All names above are for illustration only.]
tl;dr: As long as you can't guarantee that the best 50 players interested in the NASL played in the league months, you're not going to guarantee that the open winning is actually the lowest seed.
This open winner is indeed very unpredictable. Unpredictable is a bad concept when you pair them with your top seed. By seeding the open winner as 11th you protect your top seed from the unpredictable outcome. Whether or not the open winner is 11th or 16th in skill doesn't matter, you are protecting your top seeds from the worst case scenario.
It would be bad, but possible for the open winner to play the top seed and be favored in the matchup. We care a lot less who is favored in 6th vs 11th.
You make a fair point.
Actually, you make a very good point.
It's a little counter-intuitive, but I see your point as well.
I know this sounds silly, but I've always preferred clarity over absolute 'parity'. MLG is an example of a system that is technically 'fairer' but confusing as hell for a spectator (and even the players and organizers).
But I'm not disagreeing with the potential 'penalty' for the 1st seed. It's an interesting problem.
I agree that it could be unfair for the #1 seed, especially if like everyone says will happen people like MVP,MMA,etc. go through the open. Regardless a bad player is not going to come out a 1024 open bracket tournament that you have to put up money (albeit small amount) for. Even if it is a relative unknown from the NA GM league or something they will be a solid player, but that is part of the suspense and part of the storyline sold to us by the NASL, to be honest I find it interesting.
Does anyone know if NASL plans to do this every season?
But for the people saying that they will likely be ''way better then the lower tier of the top 16'' I think you're a bit out to lunch. There were 50 solid players in the NASL ( maybe a hand full of weaker ones but many at the time people were touting to do so well like QXC and Goody ) and this is the top 16 of that group, Select, Boxer, MC, July, Idra, Ret, etc. And there is going to be no easy match by the time it gets to the round of 16, and if someone goes through the 1024 bracket and then manages to beat Select or whoever in the first round then so be it, it's not like they didn't earn it.
This is a very odd concern considering that this is the formatting that most tournaments go through. The basic wrap idea of the seeded tournament (i.e. seed 1 vs seed 16; seed 2 vs seed 15 etc) is a very safe and constructive format that allows for very good follow through in entertainment. What I mean by this is that even with it being broken down as the stronger players versus the possible weaker players (which just on paper, can lead a person to expect a slightly lower or easier game for the higher seed) the tournament can make up for this with the amount of games. As we go deeper into the tournament, the game quality and caliber is expect to grow as it is assumed better players versus better players giving us better games without the large amount that the tournament began with. It is a great entertainment model for the fans and it works quite well.
Even if the highest seed from the group phase has to go up against an opponent such as MMA or some of the other high level players that could possibly win the open tournament, then we as viewers get a championship caliber match on the very first match play of the NASL finals. After that, the tournament proceeds as normal with a balance of entertaining games and the amount of games going on. I think it could really add a big twist to the tournament. The open bracket will no doubt be stacked with high level players and it just makes it more viable to the 1st seeded player to possibly having a huge challenge on the first set of major competition. I see no real problem at all with NASL decision for this set up. It is a smart move and can easily entice the player base with a possible large and exciting match on the very first seeded match.
On June 09 2011 15:25 Tantaburs wrote: You can only base seeds off of known information. If MVP flew out to compete in the open bracket of MLG anahiem he would be seeded as an unknown as he has no rank points or past MLG history. They can't seed based off the fact that he is a two time GSL winner. This is even more clear when you are seeding not only someone who has no NASL experience but you dont even know who it is. The only place they could be seeded is as the bottom seed as that is their seed based off of past NASL result.
MLG has a system that protects the highest seeds. Unseeded but strong players do not disrupt top seeds. When MLG was a flat double elimination tournament several high seeded top players wound up against good unranked players in the first round and it was a problem. This is a key reason MLG changed their format.
On June 09 2011 15:41 BahamutIIX wrote: This is a very odd concern considering that this is the formatting that most tournaments go through. The basic wrap idea of the seeded tournament (i.e. seed 1 vs seed 16; seed 2 vs seed 15 etc) is a very safe and constructive format that allows for very good follow through in entertainment. What I mean by this is that even with it being broken down as the stronger players versus the possible weaker players (which just on paper, can lead a person to expect a slightly lower or easier game for the higher seed) the tournament can make up for this with the amount of games. As we go deeper into the tournament, the game quality and caliber is expect to grow as it is assumed better players versus better players giving us better games without the large amount that the tournament began with. It is a great entertainment model for the fans and it works quite well.
Even if the highest seed from the group phase has to go up against an opponent such as MMA or some of the other high level players that could possibly win the open tournament, then we as viewers get a championship caliber match on the very first match play of the NASL finals. After that, the tournament proceeds as normal with a balance of entertaining games and the amount of games going on. I think it could really add a big twist to the tournament. The open bracket will no doubt be stacked with high level players and it just makes it more viable to the 1st seeded player to possibly having a huge challenge on the first set of major competition. I see no real problem at all with NASL decision for this set up. It is a smart move and can easily entice the player base with a possible large and exciting match on the very first seeded match.
Unfortunately what you describe is the opposite of what tournaments want. You want the championship caliber match to be the finals, not the Ro16 match.
For example, you want to see the two best NFL teams play in the superbowl, not the divisional playoffs. More people watch the finals/superbowl, therefore the best match should be there.
I agree that it might cause problems, but i like the seeding system and it makes sense to give the open bracket winner the lowest seed. Giving the open bracket winner 11# seed would be a solution, but a tad unfair.
The tournament system for NASL overall is so good though so this wont annoy me too much, even if we could see a finals worthy match in the ro16.
Even though the winner of the open bracket might be one of the best, I don't think that this matters at all. Everybody of the 16 finalists will be amazingly good, so there won't be any "bad" players anyway
On June 09 2011 15:41 BahamutIIX wrote: This is a very odd concern considering that this is the formatting that most tournaments go through. The basic wrap idea of the seeded tournament (i.e. seed 1 vs seed 16; seed 2 vs seed 15 etc) is a very safe and constructive format that allows for very good follow through in entertainment. What I mean by this is that even with it being broken down as the stronger players versus the possible weaker players (which just on paper, can lead a person to expect a slightly lower or easier game for the higher seed) the tournament can make up for this with the amount of games. As we go deeper into the tournament, the game quality and caliber is expect to grow as it is assumed better players versus better players giving us better games without the large amount that the tournament began with. It is a great entertainment model for the fans and it works quite well.
Even if the highest seed from the group phase has to go up against an opponent such as MMA or some of the other high level players that could possibly win the open tournament, then we as viewers get a championship caliber match on the very first match play of the NASL finals. After that, the tournament proceeds as normal with a balance of entertaining games and the amount of games going on. I think it could really add a big twist to the tournament. The open bracket will no doubt be stacked with high level players and it just makes it more viable to the 1st seeded player to possibly having a huge challenge on the first set of major competition. I see no real problem at all with NASL decision for this set up. It is a smart move and can easily entice the player base with a possible large and exciting match on the very first seeded match.
Unfortunately what you describe is the opposite of what tournaments want. You want the championship caliber match to be the finals, not the Ro16 match.
For example, you want to see the two best NFL teams play in the superbowl, not the divisional playoffs. More people watch the finals/superbowl, therefore the best match should be there.
Not only this, but also (as was previously mentioned) there is money on the line. If the two highest-caliber players faced off in the first round, one would essentially be "robbed" of a large portion of the prize pool.
On June 09 2011 15:58 Sacro wrote: I agree that it might cause problems, but i like the seeding system and it makes sense to give the open bracket winner the lowest seed. Giving the open bracket winner 11# seed would be a solution, but a tad unfair.
The tournament system for NASL overall is so good though so this wont annoy me too much, even if we could see a finals worthy match in the ro16.
I don't see why its unfair and in fact can argue unfair the other way. The lowest 5 players in the NASL championship bracket had every opportunity to secure a 1-10 seed and didn't. They now claw their way in from a playoffs to get those last couple spots. However the open winner has to play brilliantly to even get in the tournament. To give a player that has to play exceptionally a seed lower than the players that just barely made it could in fact be unfair.
Please note that I am not saying anything about the quality of the players themselves just about the method of qualifying. I personally see an open win as a stronger qualification method than a playoff spot victory. This is even understanding that the playoff winners are still in the top 30% of NASL players.
It is like it is! Look at ski jumping (yeah...) at some tourneys you have to qualify and in the first round of the real tournament the best qualifier jumps against the worst qualifier. But the top jumpers in the "league" (I think the top 3 or so...) don't have to qualify if they don't want to. If they choose this they are seeded the lowest and so have to jump against very strong opponents! Nobody is crying there...
On June 09 2011 15:41 BahamutIIX wrote: This is a very odd concern considering that this is the formatting that most tournaments go through. The basic wrap idea of the seeded tournament (i.e. seed 1 vs seed 16; seed 2 vs seed 15 etc) is a very safe and constructive format that allows for very good follow through in entertainment. What I mean by this is that even with it being broken down as the stronger players versus the possible weaker players (which just on paper, can lead a person to expect a slightly lower or easier game for the higher seed) the tournament can make up for this with the amount of games. As we go deeper into the tournament, the game quality and caliber is expect to grow as it is assumed better players versus better players giving us better games without the large amount that the tournament began with. It is a great entertainment model for the fans and it works quite well.
Even if the highest seed from the group phase has to go up against an opponent such as MMA or some of the other high level players that could possibly win the open tournament, then we as viewers get a championship caliber match on the very first match play of the NASL finals. After that, the tournament proceeds as normal with a balance of entertaining games and the amount of games going on. I think it could really add a big twist to the tournament. The open bracket will no doubt be stacked with high level players and it just makes it more viable to the 1st seeded player to possibly having a huge challenge on the first set of major competition. I see no real problem at all with NASL decision for this set up. It is a smart move and can easily entice the player base with a possible large and exciting match on the very first seeded match.
Unfortunately what you describe is the opposite of what tournaments want. You want the championship caliber match to be the finals, not the Ro16 match.
For example, you want to see the two best NFL teams play in the superbowl, not the divisional playoffs. More people watch the finals/superbowl, therefore the best match should be there.
That is a good point. I hadn't quite thought about it that way. My view still stands with the point that there will be a possible high end game on the first day. The thing is that even if the open bracket player takes out the 1st seeded player, it doesn't really effect the end quality of the tournament. It wouldn't really change even if they just seeded in another player instead of holding the open tournament.
The hard thing is that this is a highly theoretical convo. We are expecting a super high end player to make it through the open tournament. There is not doubt that this could happen, but, with a 1024 person tournament, anything can really happen. I think it just gives the viewers a chance to see a really good match on the first day of comp in the playoffs that will show the best player making it through to go on and finish their stay in the tournament.
Also, just because we have a possible big match on the first day doesn't mean that the finals itself is going to be horrible. This is just a very hypothetical convo and it really is hard to setup a prediction set for this tournament. I would love it though if NASL had a set up for a double bracket tournament with a winners and losers bracket. I think that would probably be the best solution to any situation this may cause with the original brackets. Though I may be completely wrong.
On June 09 2011 11:27 h3nG wrote: sc2guy: do you really believe the open bracket winner will be terribly bad?? it's a $50,000 tournament. I imagine a lot of Koreans trying to eat a piece of the pie. Guys like MMA, Losira, etc... will be tempted to sign up. Just a thought.
NASL has a lot of strong players. But I truly believe there are a lot of powerful SC2 players who will sign up for NASL. Just look at all who flocked to MLG, and that was for only $5000.
I think they think it's bad because 2 potentially strong players eliminate one another so early in the game. And even though the #1 of the open tournament will be included in the next season, I do have to agree.
Look at it that way: it means the open tournament is the hardest possible path to win NASL. Would it be more fair for the guy that comes from the open tourney to have to play one of the weaker finalists, while someone else from the finalists has to play the #1? That wouldn't sound reasonable to me.
On June 09 2011 16:35 figq wrote: Look at it that way: it means the open tournament is the hardest possible path to win NASL. Would it be more fair for the guy that comes from the open tourney to have to play one of the weaker finalists, while someone else from the finalists has to play the #1? That wouldn't sound reasonable to me.
Its an opinion on strength of victory. I think one of the other finalists should absolutely have to play the top seed. The playoff winners are in the top 30% of NASL, but not in the top 20%. The open winner is the top .1% of the open tournament. I view the winner of the open as naturally stronger than the playoff winners in the NASL. The open will have a lot of pro's as well, winning will be no small feat.
I have no issue at all with this for two different reasons.
1| Quality of the Winner of the 1024 Tournament. Although the current signups are not amazing yet I feel that the tournament will have a very good field. I expect many more signups of not only Koreans but also by more Europeans. The Europeans however will wait with their signup until the play dates issue with Dreamhack has been resolved, Xeris told us to expect an announcement about that yesterday but I guess it is hard.
At any rate I don't think that we should be afraid of a bad player winning a qualifier and taking up a spot that should have gone to a better player. Take a look at the TSL3 Qualifiers, none of the players that won one should be considered and 7 out of those 8 made it out of the first round. In fact the final four all won a Qualifier.
The argument the other way around, as in the 1024 winner being too good of a player to get Bottom Seed is completly invalid in my opinion. The last 15 players that survive through not only the Division Play but also the Playofss will all be excellent players.
2| Not over-rewarding the 1024-Player. I feel that the players that have performed well over the last few weeks should be rewarded for that and that because of that any 'bonus slots' in the finals should be played against the highest seeds. If you would give the Open Tournament winner a signficantly easier seed like the 11th one that is a slap in the face to all the players that have played their heart out for the last 9 or 10 weeks. (10 if you come through the playoffs)
On top of that the winner of the Open Tournament honestly already has got a big price because he won the Open: A ticket into the next season. It is not like his victory would be completly useless if he were to get knocked out immediatly.
On June 09 2011 15:41 BahamutIIX wrote: This is a very odd concern considering that this is the formatting that most tournaments go through. The basic wrap idea of the seeded tournament (i.e. seed 1 vs seed 16; seed 2 vs seed 15 etc) is a very safe and constructive format that allows for very good follow through in entertainment. What I mean by this is that even with it being broken down as the stronger players versus the possible weaker players (which just on paper, can lead a person to expect a slightly lower or easier game for the higher seed) the tournament can make up for this with the amount of games. As we go deeper into the tournament, the game quality and caliber is expect to grow as it is assumed better players versus better players giving us better games without the large amount that the tournament began with. It is a great entertainment model for the fans and it works quite well.
Even if the highest seed from the group phase has to go up against an opponent such as MMA or some of the other high level players that could possibly win the open tournament, then we as viewers get a championship caliber match on the very first match play of the NASL finals. After that, the tournament proceeds as normal with a balance of entertaining games and the amount of games going on. I think it could really add a big twist to the tournament. The open bracket will no doubt be stacked with high level players and it just makes it more viable to the 1st seeded player to possibly having a huge challenge on the first set of major competition. I see no real problem at all with NASL decision for this set up. It is a smart move and can easily entice the player base with a possible large and exciting match on the very first seeded match.
Unfortunately what you describe is the opposite of what tournaments want. You want the championship caliber match to be the finals, not the Ro16 match.
For example, you want to see the two best NFL teams play in the superbowl, not the divisional playoffs. More people watch the finals/superbowl, therefore the best match should be there.
That is a good point. I hadn't quite thought about it that way. My view still stands with the point that there will be a possible high end game on the first day. The thing is that even if the open bracket player takes out the 1st seeded player, it doesn't really effect the end quality of the tournament. It wouldn't really change even if they just seeded in another player instead of holding the open tournament.
The hard thing is that this is a highly theoretical convo. We are expecting a super high end player to make it through the open tournament. There is not doubt that this could happen, but, with a 1024 person tournament, anything can really happen. I think it just gives the viewers a chance to see a really good match on the first day of comp in the playoffs that will show the best player making it through to go on and finish their stay in the tournament.
Also, just because we have a possible big match on the first day doesn't mean that the finals itself is going to be horrible. This is just a very hypothetical convo and it really is hard to setup a prediction set for this tournament. I would love it though if NASL had a set up for a double bracket tournament with a winners and losers bracket. I think that would probably be the best solution to any situation this may cause with the original brackets. Though I may be completely wrong.
The 1st seed at the end of the league matches, having worked hard to earn his position, should have the biggest advantage going into the playoffs (hence the whole concept of 1st - strongest vs. 16th - weakest). Pitting him against the open bracket winner poses several problems, including the fact that the open tournament winner is a total wild card until the entire tournament is played out. This means that the NASL winner will have the least amount of time to prepare for the matchup and may have to play a very strong opponent, putting him in a disadvantageous position and triggering the question "Why would anyone want to be the #1 seed going into the playoffs?"
By seeding the open tournament winner at 11th, the players that did not win their divisions/ had to claw their way into the playoffs get placed 12th-16th, while the division leaders stay at the top at 1st - 10th. This means 1st place plays theoretically the weakest player to qualify for the playoffs from the league and thus has the biggest advantage.
On June 09 2011 14:52 Probe1 wrote: Pretty amusing to see people complain about the NASL then watch it. Then complain. Then watch it again.
I don't see who is complaining. We suggest change for the betterment of NASL because we love it and support it fully. We want the best, so we ask for it. Its all about the constructive criticism.
Shit posts like this the one below.
On June 09 2011 11:28 Kraznaya wrote: This just underlines NASL's stupidity in general. They invited people like Artosis, Grubby, Painuser, etc. when they clearly weren't the top 50 players in the world, and now you have problems like these.
Sorry I'm just in a bad mood and seeing that was louder to me then other peoples suggestions.
On June 09 2011 11:18 h3nG wrote: Lemme ask you this...would you rather play the 16th seed in NASL or MMA if he signs up and ends up winning the open tournament? Just a thought...
since each round you pass gives u money, yes everyone would prefer a "weaker" opponent
That is a bit odd that they are having it play out like that. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets changed. That could be really brutal for the top finisher.
Sooooo....what exactly would be the justification for giving the open bracket winner a higher seed than players who competed in the main league? The winner of the open bracket might be a player every bit as good as anyone in the main league. Or it could be a lesser player nobody has ever heard of who skates through because a top player loses early and leaves a big hole in their portion of the bracket.
Even if you were silly enough to decide you were going to give the open bracket winner a higher seed, how would you know which seed they deserved? The other 15 players have however many weeks worth of results in the league by which they're ranked. The open bracket winner doesn't have that so your idea is to do what? Just make a judgement call after the open bracket is done?
You've got people like TLO, Moonglade, Machine, Socke who have less than stellar results in their divisions but are quite capable of taking wins off of anyone else in the NASL. Say that unknown player gets through the open bracket. Are you going to walk up to one of those guys and say this random who dumb-lucked his way through the open bracket gets a higher seed than you? And which seed do you give him? And what do you base that decision on?
It's all good and well to say the person who gets through the open bracket will be a dangerous player. The problem is there's no empirical way to determine which seed they should get if not the last one on the grounds that they didn't participate in the main league.
To make an analogy to other tournament based things: tennis. Say a top player, Novak Djokavic or Andy Murray maybe, gets injured and can't play for a while. Their ranking falls. When they're ready to come back, their ranking has slipped and they just miss being the 32nd and final seed at Wimbledon. Brackets get drawn and Novak/Andy gets matched against Rafael Nadal 1st round. Sucks to be both players, absolutely. Sucks to be the fans who bought 2nd week Centre Court tickets because they won't be seeing one of these guys. Practically speaking you know that this player is better than 33rd in the world, but he doesn't have results which bear that out so here he is playing Rafa in the 1st round.
On June 09 2011 20:52 piegasm wrote: Sooooo....what exactly would be the justification for giving the open bracket winner a higher seed than players who competed in the main league? The winner of the open bracket might be a player every bit as good as anyone in the main league. Or it could be a lesser player nobody has ever heard of who skates through because a top player loses early and leaves a big hole in their portion of the bracket.
Even if you were silly enough to decide you were going to give the open bracket winner a higher seed, how would you know which seed they deserved? The other 15 players have however many weeks worth of results in the league by which they're ranked. The open bracket winner doesn't have that so your idea is to do what? Just make a judgement call after the open bracket is done?
You've got people like TLO, Moonglade, Machine, Socke who have less than stellar results in their divisions but are quite capable of taking wins off of anyone else in the NASL. Say that unknown player gets through the open bracket. Are you going to walk up to one of those guys and say this random who dumb-lucked his way through the open bracket gets a higher seed than you? And which seed do you give him? And what do you base that decision on?
It's all good and well to say the person who gets through the open bracket will be a dangerous player. The problem is there's no empirical way to determine which seed they should get if not the last one on the grounds that they didn't participate in the main league.
To make an analogy to other tournament based things: tennis. Say a top player, Novak Djokavic or Andy Murray maybe, gets injured and can't play for a while. Their ranking falls. When they're ready to come back, their ranking has slipped and they just miss being the 32nd and final seed at Wimbledon. Brackets get drawn and Novak/Andy gets matched against Rafael Nadal 1st round. Sucks to be both players, absolutely. Sucks to be the fans who bought 2nd week Centre Court tickets because they won't be seeing one of these guys. Practically speaking you know that this player is better than 33rd in the world, but he doesn't have results which bear that out so here he is playing Rafa in the 1st round.
You can make an estimation off the "expected quality" of the player. Also, the element of uncertainty argued numerous times in posts above mine is a very solid argument.
I don't know. The thing is we don't even know who is participating in the open qualifier. And then suddenly some super unknown player wins it and the crying starts all over again because he gets an easier opponent...
On June 09 2011 20:52 piegasm wrote: Sooooo....what exactly would be the justification for giving the open bracket winner a higher seed than players who competed in the main league? The winner of the open bracket might be a player every bit as good as anyone in the main league. Or it could be a lesser player nobody has ever heard of who skates through because a top player loses early and leaves a big hole in their portion of the bracket.
Even if you were silly enough to decide you were going to give the open bracket winner a higher seed, how would you know which seed they deserved? The other 15 players have however many weeks worth of results in the league by which they're ranked. The open bracket winner doesn't have that so your idea is to do what? Just make a judgement call after the open bracket is done?
You've got people like TLO, Moonglade, Machine, Socke who have less than stellar results in their divisions but are quite capable of taking wins off of anyone else in the NASL. Say that unknown player gets through the open bracket. Are you going to walk up to one of those guys and say this random who dumb-lucked his way through the open bracket gets a higher seed than you? And which seed do you give him? And what do you base that decision on?
It's all good and well to say the person who gets through the open bracket will be a dangerous player. The problem is there's no empirical way to determine which seed they should get if not the last one on the grounds that they didn't participate in the main league.
To make an analogy to other tournament based things: tennis. Say a top player, Novak Djokavic or Andy Murray maybe, gets injured and can't play for a while. Their ranking falls. When they're ready to come back, their ranking has slipped and they just miss being the 32nd and final seed at Wimbledon. Brackets get drawn and Novak/Andy gets matched against Rafael Nadal 1st round. Sucks to be both players, absolutely. Sucks to be the fans who bought 2nd week Centre Court tickets because they won't be seeing one of these guys. Practically speaking you know that this player is better than 33rd in the world, but he doesn't have results which bear that out so here he is playing Rafa in the 1st round.
You can make an estimation off the "expected quality" of the player. Also, the element of uncertainty argued numerous times in posts above mine is a very solid argument.
Did you actually comprehend any of what I said? There is no objective way to determine the "expected quality" of a player.
In addition, what would be the point of playing all this out over the course of several months if NASL is just going to come along at the end and "estimate" how good everyone is?
On June 09 2011 20:52 piegasm wrote: Sooooo....what exactly would be the justification for giving the open bracket winner a higher seed than players who competed in the main league? The winner of the open bracket might be a player every bit as good as anyone in the main league. Or it could be a lesser player nobody has ever heard of who skates through because a top player loses early and leaves a big hole in their portion of the bracket.
Even if you were silly enough to decide you were going to give the open bracket winner a higher seed, how would you know which seed they deserved? The other 15 players have however many weeks worth of results in the league by which they're ranked. The open bracket winner doesn't have that so your idea is to do what? Just make a judgement call after the open bracket is done?
You've got people like TLO, Moonglade, Machine, Socke who have less than stellar results in their divisions but are quite capable of taking wins off of anyone else in the NASL. Say that unknown player gets through the open bracket. Are you going to walk up to one of those guys and say this random who dumb-lucked his way through the open bracket gets a higher seed than you? And which seed do you give him? And what do you base that decision on?
It's all good and well to say the person who gets through the open bracket will be a dangerous player. The problem is there's no empirical way to determine which seed they should get if not the last one on the grounds that they didn't participate in the main league.
To make an analogy to other tournament based things: tennis. Say a top player, Novak Djokavic or Andy Murray maybe, gets injured and can't play for a while. Their ranking falls. When they're ready to come back, their ranking has slipped and they just miss being the 32nd and final seed at Wimbledon. Brackets get drawn and Novak/Andy gets matched against Rafael Nadal 1st round. Sucks to be both players, absolutely. Sucks to be the fans who bought 2nd week Centre Court tickets because they won't be seeing one of these guys. Practically speaking you know that this player is better than 33rd in the world, but he doesn't have results which bear that out so here he is playing Rafa in the 1st round.
You can make an estimation off the "expected quality" of the player. Also, the element of uncertainty argued numerous times in posts above mine is a very solid argument.
Did you actually comprehend any of what I said? There is no objective way to determine the "expected quality" of a player. You try that and you get a complete shit storm, especially in the event that you get a surprise winner of the open bracket.
I don't know what legwork you think "objective" is doing here, but you can certainly make reasonable assumptions about the quality of the player to make it through the open bracket. First consider a very simplified scenario: the open bracket consists exclusively of the players currently in GSL Code S. Can we make any assumptions then, or is it still an utter crapshoot?
Obviously, that's not the scenario we're working with, but it should at least show you that there's no problem with estimating the quality of the winner in principle. At that point it becomes a question of who we expect to sign up, and the effect that we think randomness will have on the outcome.
Given that this is a tournament with a huge prize pool, I think it's very safe to assume that all the top players that can play will choose to do so. I'll add the caveat that some of the players in Korea may choose not to play due to lag, though I doubt this will dissuade many of them. Moreover, as we've seen from MLG open brackets, the pro players actually win very consistently against good-but-not-pro players. I always thought that many pros would be knocked out by fluky cheese strategies due to the sheer number of games they needed to play, but we've seen from both MLG Dallas and MLG Columbus that the pro players advance with remarkable consistency, rarely being eliminated by anyone other than another pro player.
All this to say: the winner of the open tournament is probably going to be extremely good. We can't know exactly how good, but it will almost certainly be a professional player from somewhere, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a top Korean player there. As the OP (and others) have argued in this thread, it's a bad thing for the tournament if the first match of the tournament is likely to eliminate one of the best players in it.
The best solution that I've seen is to seed the player somewhere in the middle of the pack. It insures against the scenario I outlined above, but it also doesn't give the open winner an especially privileged position. And I'd like to stress that nobody is advocating picking and choosing the bracket based on how good we think the players are after the results are in. The goal is to construct a tournament which is likely to produce these outcomes. The idea of seeding people through league play is a good method of achieving this -- the better players are more likely to win in their league games, so they will be seeded higher. But we have very good reason to assume that the winner of the open tournament will be better than many of those players, so it's good tournament design to seed them higher than #16.
With respect to your tennis analogy: that's simply a case of randomness having an impact on the outcome. The system is still designed to produce the right outcome, and that's all we're trying to achieve by amending this seeding rule. Nobody is saying "MC had lag issues so he's actually a better player than his results suggest. Let's seed him higher!" They're saying "the open bracket winner is probably going to be an exceptional player, so it makes sense to seed him higher."
I'm honestly flabbergasted that this incredibly dump seeding has still not been changed... I clearly remember a lot of people raising this issue at the very beginning when the system was announced and I supposed at that time that NASL would promptly react to fix this aberration. Looks like I was wrong.
What's most surprising to me is that the NASL overall has a very nice and solid system... how could they miss something that obvious???
On June 10 2011 00:17 Q(-_-Q wrote: It's because anyone seeded through playing for weeks and weeks in the NASL should be rewarded. They put more work in.
But they aren't. The #1 seed is probably playing the toughest opponent, which is the opposite of what a) you are saying, b) should be happening.
In any tournament that isn't "winner takes it all" format matters a lot in who is winning money.
Many tournaments with money for number 2 will use a double elimination bracket to eliminate seeding-errors.
In NASL there is some kind of prize for top 15 (+1)? That puts a lot of pressure on assuring a fair seed-system.
As I see it NASL has chosen a decent true, tried and tested system for the playoff. Yes, it is not the most fair system and no, you can never make it perfectly fair anyway.
Just calling them out on the winner of the open tournament having a tough opponent is not the way to go without giving better alternative solutions.
As I see it the following changes are the possible improvements:
- The highest seeded players can choose their opponent from the rest of the qualified players. In Korea that has been tried in some way for groups and resulted in groups of death because the best players want the hardest opponent as early as possible.
- The winner of the open tournament will be put into the tournament at an earlier state. Generally you want to avoid extra games and when should he enter and more important: instead of whom?
- The format of the whole tournament is changed. How is up to the user. Be creative!
Arguing the most fair way to improve this inconvenience will give a far better discussion than just throwing mud at Incontrol and him giving back...
i thought the same when i first time see it. I think the top players will loose there last game on purpose to dont get nr.1 because its way better for them to get nr2-4. a system that force you to loose a game to have better position is a bad system.
I dont really get why nr.1 of the open tournament should get a seat in this session. Just make qualifier tournaments for next session like all others.
It's pretty silly to argue that the open bracket winner might be some unknown terrible player. The NASL bracketing system is needlessly complex and produces wonky results - as noted. The ideal solution just seems to have the open bracket winner play in the pre-tournament seeding matches with the other players.
On June 09 2011 20:52 piegasm wrote: Sooooo....what exactly would be the justification for giving the open bracket winner a higher seed than players who competed in the main league? The winner of the open bracket might be a player every bit as good as anyone in the main league. Or it could be a lesser player nobody has ever heard of who skates through because a top player loses early and leaves a big hole in their portion of the bracket.
Even if you were silly enough to decide you were going to give the open bracket winner a higher seed, how would you know which seed they deserved? The other 15 players have however many weeks worth of results in the league by which they're ranked. The open bracket winner doesn't have that so your idea is to do what? Just make a judgement call after the open bracket is done?
You've got people like TLO, Moonglade, Machine, Socke who have less than stellar results in their divisions but are quite capable of taking wins off of anyone else in the NASL. Say that unknown player gets through the open bracket. Are you going to walk up to one of those guys and say this random who dumb-lucked his way through the open bracket gets a higher seed than you? And which seed do you give him? And what do you base that decision on?
It's all good and well to say the person who gets through the open bracket will be a dangerous player. The problem is there's no empirical way to determine which seed they should get if not the last one on the grounds that they didn't participate in the main league.
To make an analogy to other tournament based things: tennis. Say a top player, Novak Djokavic or Andy Murray maybe, gets injured and can't play for a while. Their ranking falls. When they're ready to come back, their ranking has slipped and they just miss being the 32nd and final seed at Wimbledon. Brackets get drawn and Novak/Andy gets matched against Rafael Nadal 1st round. Sucks to be both players, absolutely. Sucks to be the fans who bought 2nd week Centre Court tickets because they won't be seeing one of these guys. Practically speaking you know that this player is better than 33rd in the world, but he doesn't have results which bear that out so here he is playing Rafa in the 1st round.
You can make an estimation off the "expected quality" of the player. Also, the element of uncertainty argued numerous times in posts above mine is a very solid argument.
Did you actually comprehend any of what I said? There is no objective way to determine the "expected quality" of a player. You try that and you get a complete shit storm, especially in the event that you get a surprise winner of the open bracket.
I don't know what legwork you think "objective" is doing here, but you can certainly make reasonable assumptions about the quality of the player to make it through the open bracket. First consider a very simplified scenario: the open bracket consists exclusively of the players currently in GSL Code S. Can we make any assumptions then, or is it still an utter crapshoot?
Obviously, that's not the scenario we're working with, but it should at least show you that there's no problem with estimating the quality of the winner in principle. At that point it becomes a question of who we expect to sign up, and the effect that we think randomness will have on the outcome.
Given that this is a tournament with a huge prize pool, I think it's very safe to assume that all the top players that can play will choose to do so. I'll add the caveat that some of the players in Korea may choose not to play due to lag, though I doubt this will dissuade many of them. Moreover, as we've seen from MLG open brackets, the pro players actually win very consistently against good-but-not-pro players. I always thought that many pros would be knocked out by fluky cheese strategies due to the sheer number of games they needed to play, but we've seen from both MLG Dallas and MLG Columbus that the pro players advance with remarkable consistency, rarely being eliminated by anyone other than another pro player.
All this to say: the winner of the open tournament is probably going to be extremely good. We can't know exactly how good, but it will almost certainly be a professional player from somewhere, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a top Korean player there. As the OP (and others) have argued in this thread, it's a bad thing for the tournament if the first match of the tournament is likely to eliminate one of the best players in it.
The best solution that I've seen is to seed the player somewhere in the middle of the pack. It insures against the scenario I outlined above, but it also doesn't give the open winner an especially privileged position. And I'd like to stress that nobody is advocating picking and choosing the bracket based on how good we think the players are after the results are in. The goal is to construct a tournament which is likely to produce these outcomes. The idea of seeding people through league play is a good method of achieving this -- the better players are more likely to win in their league games, so they will be seeded higher. But we have very good reason to assume that the winner of the open tournament will be better than many of those players, so it's good tournament design to seed them higher than #16.
With respect to your tennis analogy: that's simply a case of randomness having an impact on the outcome. The system is still designed to produce the right outcome, and that's all we're trying to achieve by amending this seeding rule. Nobody is saying "MC had lag issues so he's actually a better player than his results suggest. Let's seed him higher!" They're saying "the open bracket winner is probably going to be an exceptional player, so it makes sense to seed him higher."
The top 15 players from the main league are definitely going to be exceptional players, who've participated in the league for its entirety and earned a position based on their results as compared to everyone else's results. We know this because all the people currently participating are well known pros who have proven themselves both in the NASL and outside. The open bracket winner will probably be an exceptional player as well but could be a fluke. And you want to seed him higher than half the field based on "probably" and call that fair.
Even if the open bracket winner is a pro himself, on what grounds do you assume he's a better pro than the people he's going to out-seed? However good he is, why does he deserve to take precedence over players who competed in the main league and earned their results? The way I see it, someone with no results in a league doesn't deserve to be seeded higher in the playoffs of said league than someone who does have results.
It's pretty silly to argue that the open bracket winner might be some unknown terrible player. The NASL bracketing system is needlessly complex and produces wonky results - as noted. The ideal solution just seems to have the open bracket winner play in the pre-tournament seeding matches with the other players.
Nobody is saying terrible. Everyone in the world who is good isn't necessarily known. Flukes happen. When the top players in an event lose early, that makes room for lesser players to squeak through where they otherwise wouldn't have had a chance. It's not likely but it's a possible eventuality that, IMO needs to be accounted for.
The open bracket narrows down to an eventual winner, therefore you have ready made structure of the weakest->strongest open bracket players. Seeding/points available for joining would hardly be defficult to assign.
Seems kind of silly to me - there is no logic on not putting #1 pool stage seed against the lowest players promoted from open bracket.
I actually do not like this because of other reasons. Open tournament is what, 1024 players? A person that manages to actually go through that without losing should be given a bit more slack then fighting instantly against a first seed from NASL season 1. Personally I feel fighting against a bigger number of tops players in Open tournament with games being one after another without time for any preparations is tougher then 9 games they normally play in a group (not to mention they do not need to win all 9 to be the best; they can probably do that with 8:1 or even with 7:2)
Kraznaya your a disgrace to all chinese gamers. People including myself voted for players like Artosis and Grubby to be in the NASL. People wanted to see them play. I thought it was a brilliant move for NASL to give viewers a chance to see their favorite players play, regardless of what arbitrary player ranking people like yourself would have in their simple mind. Please do us all a favor and stfu for the sake of China and all chinese immigrants living in North America.
Personally, I would rather see 2 strong players go head to head for an exciting than see a poorly match making with uninteresting games no matter if they came from a seeding or an open bracket.
On June 10 2011 01:36 jacobmarlow wrote: Kraznaya your a disgrace to all chinese gamers. People including myself voted for players like Artosis and Grubby to be in the NASL. People wanted to see them play. I thought it was a brilliant move for NASL to give viewers a chance to see their favorite players play, regardless of what arbitrary player ranking people like yourself would have in their simple mind. Please do us all a favor and stfu for the sake of China and all chinese immigrants living in North America.
lol, I find it ironic that you say one persons (albeit stupid) comment is a disgrace to the single largest people group in the world, implying something even more ignorant then what he wrote. I'm sure ''Kraznaya'' didn't write his post with the burden of all Chinese gamers and Chinese American immigrants on his shoulders, Much like you didn't write yours to represent all of Canada.
To get back on topic; I also don't see how people are saying you put the open bracket winner higher then 16th? The 50 NASL pros played all season to get as good of a seed as possible in the playoffs, and you want to just arbitrarily throw someone in the middle of the playoffs where you ''think'' it would be fair for him and the rest of the bracket, that's not how things work.
Like someone else stated, even if this guy loses in the first round he's already won a place in next seasons NASL as well as travel to the NASL event which is a treat in itself.
I am not sure why people don't just watch and enjoy this event and how it unfolds as I'm sure either way it will be exciting, I'm sure if at the end of it all it is obvious that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way it all works out ( in regards to the open bracket winner being in the round of 16 ) the NASL will willingly change it and improve upon it for season 2.
Well in theory they have the 50 best players around (I know this isn't true but it's what they said at the beggining) so to say that the 16th/50 player is weaker than any random opponent is contradictory to the structure of the tournament. However I do agree that it could end up being bad to be the 1st seed, however you can also say that if somebody like Idra or MC ends up rank 16th (I'm not sure how the seeding works but those players may be in the playoffs so I presume there is a realistic chance of that) that could also be harder than the open bracket, so I think in the end there is a lot of chance but a change of rules will not change that and is unnecessary.
Holy crap do a lot of you like to whine about pointless crap! There is no way you can seed the winner of the open tournament higher then a player who played for 9 weeks to earn their spot. You guys keep saying how is it fair if the winner of the open tournament is someone like MMA? First off life isn't fair. Second what if it's some scrub who 6pools every single game to win the tournament? There is no way of knowing who will win and you can do seeding based on who wins the tournament. You have to assume that the top 15 that EARNED their spot are the 15 best players.
On June 10 2011 01:53 Ziktomini wrote: Well in theory they have the 50 best players around (I know this isn't true but it's what they said at the beggining) so to say that the 16th/50 player is weaker than any random opponent is contradictory to the structure of the tournament. However I do agree that it could end up being bad to be the 1st seed, however you can also say that if somebody like Idra or MC ends up rank 16th (I'm not sure how the seeding works but those players may be in the playoffs so I presume there is a realistic chance of that) that could also be harder than the open bracket, so I think in the end there is a lot of chance but a change of rules will not change that and is unnecessary.
This is true, but NASL having the top50 players in the world is so far from the truth that they should have taken that into account when making the system.
After slaughtering his way through the Open tournament the winner have to face the top seed, which should be relatively tougher than the 16th seed... I do feel somewhat sorry for him.
On June 10 2011 02:07 Longshank wrote: This is true, but NASL having the top50 players in the world is so far from the truth that they should have taken that into account when making the system.
It doesn't matter if it's true or not. The open tournament winner is a complete unknown and even if it is a known player there is no plausible way to PROVE that they are a better player then anyone in the top 15.
On June 10 2011 02:07 Longshank wrote: This is true, but NASL having the top50 players in the world is so far from the truth that they should have taken that into account when making the system.
It doesn't matter if it's true or not. The open tournament winner is a complete unknown and even if it is a known player there is no plausible way to PROVE that they are a better player then anyone in the top 15.
Okay we'll see if people agree with this sentiment if Nestea or a similarly skilled player wins the online qualifier.
I really liked the idea of letting the #1 seed choose his his opponent, then letting #2 choose his until all of the matches are set. I think it leads to a really cool dynamic and should be considered. If you're going to have a convoluted set up in the first place you might as well be all the way convoluted.
I mean really... why not have 4 divisions of 12 players or something, cut the league off at 48 for next season and take the top 4 from each league for the playoffs... simple, clean, resembles REAL sports. I dont see why their are 3 different criteria for making the playoffs in this league... its like they bent over backwards to avoid the conversation that "X Division is harder than Y division", but that conversation takes place in literally every sport.
NASL "bracketology", for lack of a better term, has been so confusing that it completely removed the whole sensation found in REAL sports of just following your team throughout the season (not just during the last week or two when all the "if, then" statements came out about the results of the league games) and watching them jockey for the playoff spots.
If you're a number one seed it shouldn't matter who you face first round, you should be able to beat anyone thrown in your way. Same goes for the open bracket since everyone seems to think that if that player was put in group play he'd be the one seed.
On June 10 2011 02:34 Jayrod wrote: Okay we'll see if people agree with this sentiment if Nestea or a similarly skilled player wins the online qualifier.
I really liked the idea of letting the #1 seed choose his his opponent, then letting #2 choose his until all of the matches are set. I think it leads to a really cool dynamic and should be considered. If you're going to have a convoluted set up in the first place you might as well be all the way convoluted.
I mean really... why not have 4 divisions of 12 players or something, cut the league off at 48 for next season and take the top 4 from each league for the playoffs... simple, clean, resembles REAL sports. I dont see why their are 3 different criteria for making the playoffs in this league... its like they bent over backwards to avoid the conversation that "X Division is harder than Y division", but that conversation takes place in literally every sport.
NASL "bracketology", for lack of a better term, has been so confusing that it completely removed the whole sensation found in REAL sports of just following your team throughout the season (not just during the last week or two when all the "if, then" statements came out about the results of the league games) and watching them jockey for the playoff spots.
And if someone like me wins, that is completely awful?
I actually really like that idea as well. I can see a few small issues with it like the top players only having to play their best matchup or something but the idea in general is pretty cool.
I think the solution is pretty obvious. Have a style similar to msl where players pick who is in their group, and highest seeds get the most power to decide the group (whether by picking first, or being able to move people around).
This way it is in the #1 seed's hands to decide if he wants to play the open bracket winner or not.
On June 10 2011 02:42 RmoteCntrld wrote: If you're a number one seed it shouldn't matter who you face first round, you should be able to beat anyone thrown in your way. Same goes for the open bracket since everyone seems to think that if that player was put in group play he'd be the one seed.
That's not the point. The goal of any tournament is to have the best players and the most exciting match in the finals. Obviously this doesn't always happen, but the finals always gets the most viewers and defines a tournament. For example a Jaedong/Yellow finals is remembered as a bad tournament (regardless of who played who in the round of 16), while a Jaedong/Flash finals is remembered as a great tournament (barring power issues). If you have your best players eliminated early you lose a lot of momentum and viewer interest early. Doing this is much more in NASL's interest than it is even for the players.
On June 09 2011 11:28 Kraznaya wrote: This just underlines NASL's stupidity in general. They invited people like Artosis, Grubby, Painuser, etc. when they clearly weren't the top 50 players in the world, and now you have problems like these.
Read NASL.
Why do you think this is an intelligent observation, when there are something like 8 players in the league from Asia, and nearly half are from Europe
NA basically refers to where the games are hosted, not where the players are from
On June 10 2011 02:42 RmoteCntrld wrote: If you're a number one seed it shouldn't matter who you face first round, you should be able to beat anyone thrown in your way. Same goes for the open bracket since everyone seems to think that if that player was put in group play he'd be the one seed.
If a player like NesTea or Bomber goes through the open bracket (and I will take the odds a top Korean will win the open bracket), they will smash the #1 NASL seed
On June 10 2011 02:42 RmoteCntrld wrote: If you're a number one seed it shouldn't matter who you face first round, you should be able to beat anyone thrown in your way. Same goes for the open bracket since everyone seems to think that if that player was put in group play he'd be the one seed.
If a player like NesTea or Bomber goes through the open bracket (and I will take the odds a top Korean will win the open bracket), they will smash the #1 NASL seed
Just like Nestea or MC would SMASH Thorzain in the TSL...oh wait. Making assumptions like that after some of the huge upsets that recently happened is pretty pointless.
Totally agree with OP. This is so ridiculous, the first seed who is supposed to get the easiest opponent will either get a top Korean like MKP, MVP or whatever if they attend or people like Kas, Nerchio, Thorzain lol It's just so much better to be second, third or fourth that the first has to consider losing his last match on purpose to not get first, which always sucks for everyone obviously.
On June 10 2011 02:56 Ragoo wrote: Totally agree with OP. This is so ridiculous, the first seed who is supposed to get the easiest opponent will either get a top Korean like MKP, MVP or whatever if they attend or people like Kas, Nerchio, Thorzain lol It's just so much better to be second, third or fourth that the first has to consider losing his last match on purpose to not get first, which always sucks for everyone obviously.
To be fair, there's no guarantee that the second, third or fourth spot is going to be any easier. For instance, the second seed could very well end up facing someone like Zenio or IdrA depending how Division 5 shakes up.
I know we all want to seeding to be as fair as possible, but as someone said before, this is the nature of sports. If a great player is sick or has an emergency for a few games, he can easily drop down in standings and be playing from a lower ranking.
While I agree that NASL should try to continue to improve the system, they haven't even played through one season yet. And it will never be perfect, no matter what they do.
I would have to say I'd much rather get second and be guaranteed to play someone who has had a poor showing than be first and risk playing a superstar. Agreed with the OP, but not sure what a possible solution would be. Maybe seed the open bracket winner as a middle seed?
On June 10 2011 02:42 RmoteCntrld wrote: If you're a number one seed it shouldn't matter who you face first round, you should be able to beat anyone thrown in your way. Same goes for the open bracket since everyone seems to think that if that player was put in group play he'd be the one seed.
If a player like NesTea or Bomber goes through the open bracket (and I will take the odds a top Korean will win the open bracket), they will smash the #1 NASL seed
Just like Nestea or MC would SMASH Thorzain in the TSL...oh wait. Making assumptions like that after some of the huge upsets that recently happened is pretty pointless.
You know the bracket games are played live at location.
How well did Thorzain do vs MC in MLG?
There are things called flukes, heavily influenced by the fact that Koreans are playing early in the morning with cross-ocean server lag. You can keep hoping foreigners can compete, but TSL was a FLUKE. Every other invitational, live tourney, we've seen the top Koreans, in the words of Moon, "own white dudes".
At this point it doesn't seem like NASL will change it - which really is a shame. But what I am disappointed about is the fact that this issue was identified along time ago and it wasn't addressed.
If I were in the spot to be #1 seed and I am guaranteed #2 in my division, I would throw away my final game to avoid playing the Open bracket winner. MOST will agree on this also. It stupid to gamble on who the wildcard player is. It could (and most likely) be someone of MMA or Bomber caliber. And as good as everyone is in NASL, most are not that caliber...
That is the real problem with the seeding system. We could be seeing the most epic game in round one, and see NASL robbing one of the two potentially top players from the 2nd place spot because of it.
As for solution? One is to determine the true seeding of Open Bracket winner by putting him through a few games first...kinda like MLG.
On June 10 2011 01:36 jacobmarlow wrote: Kraznaya your a disgrace to all chinese gamers. People including myself voted for players like Artosis and Grubby to be in the NASL. People wanted to see them play. I thought it was a brilliant move for NASL to give viewers a chance to see their favorite players play, regardless of what arbitrary player ranking people like yourself would have in their simple mind. Please do us all a favor and stfu for the sake of China and all chinese immigrants living in North America.
lol, I find it ironic that you say one persons (albeit stupid) comment is a disgrace to the single largest people group in the world, implying something even more ignorant then what he wrote. I'm sure ''Kraznaya'' didn't write his post with the burden of all Chinese gamers and Chinese American immigrants on his shoulders, Much like you didn't write yours to represent all of Canada.
To get back on topic; I also don't see how people are saying you put the open bracket winner higher then 16th? The 50 NASL pros played all season to get as good of a seed as possible in the playoffs, and you want to just arbitrarily throw someone in the middle of the playoffs where you ''think'' it would be fair for him and the rest of the bracket, that's not how things work.
Like someone else stated, even if this guy loses in the first round he's already won a place in next seasons NASL as well as travel to the NASL event which is a treat in itself.
I am not sure why people don't just watch and enjoy this event and how it unfolds as I'm sure either way it will be exciting, I'm sure if at the end of it all it is obvious that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way it all works out ( in regards to the open bracket winner being in the round of 16 ) the NASL will willingly change it and improve upon it for season 2.
There are motives for the change other than the idea that the open bracket winner will likely be better than a number of players from the NASL. Read the past few pages. The same arguments have been repeated over and over.
If the open bracket winner losing in the 1st round won't be a problem, how about the #1 seed from the league losing against the open tournament winner? If the open tournament winner was a top-class player, this isn't optimal, as there would be a finals-quality matchup in the first round. If the open tournament winner was some unknown, the #1 seed would be at a disadvantage in terms of preparation.
We're not ragging on the system because we hate NASL. We're making suggestions and giving constructive criticism because we want to see it grow and be the best it can be.
On June 10 2011 02:03 dmillz wrote: Holy crap do a lot of you like to whine about pointless crap! There is no way you can seed the winner of the open tournament higher then a player who played for 9 weeks to earn their spot. You guys keep saying how is it fair if the winner of the open tournament is someone like MMA? First off life isn't fair. Second what if it's some scrub who 6pools every single game to win the tournament? There is no way of knowing who will win and you can do seeding based on who wins the tournament. You have to assume that the top 15 that EARNED their spot are the 15 best players.
1 match per week over the course of 9 weeks is hardly a burden for a SC2 progamer. There's no way anyone can say that the winner of ~10 BO3's in a row in a bracket sure to be stacked with the best pros not already in the NASL (Thorzain already registered) will not have "earned" his spot either. Again, unpredictability of the open winner is one of the reasons the #1 seed shouldn't have to play him.
The open tourney winner being seeded 11th still seems like the best option to me.
On June 09 2011 11:28 Kraznaya wrote: This just underlines NASL's stupidity in general. They invited people like Artosis, Grubby, Painuser, etc. when they clearly weren't the top 50 players in the world, and now you have problems like these.
Read NASL.
How does the "NA" part even apply as an argument when you already have Europeans and Asians playing in the league anyway. They were clearly poor choices (well, maybe not PainUser at the time) and chosen primarily for their star power rather than any merit of skill. There were most definitely better people that could have taken those spots from both the foreign and Korean communities.
He was probably trying to make an "americans are stupid" comment.
On June 10 2011 02:42 RmoteCntrld wrote: If you're a number one seed it shouldn't matter who you face first round, you should be able to beat anyone thrown in your way. Same goes for the open bracket since everyone seems to think that if that player was put in group play he'd be the one seed.
If a player like NesTea or Bomber goes through the open bracket (and I will take the odds a top Korean will win the open bracket), they will smash the #1 NASL seed
Just like Nestea or MC would SMASH Thorzain in the TSL...oh wait. Making assumptions like that after some of the huge upsets that recently happened is pretty pointless.
You know the bracket games are played live at location.
How well did Thorzain do vs MC in MLG?
There are things called flukes, heavily influenced by the fact that Koreans are playing early in the morning with cross-ocean server lag. You can keep hoping foreigners can compete, but TSL was a FLUKE. Every other invitational, live tourney, we've seen the top Koreans, in the words of Moon, "own white dudes".
Uh... thorzain actually did ok against MC at MLG...
He went 0-2 in the first BO3... but went 2-2 in the next. Technically he is 5-6 in their 11 games played.
I'd say they are pretty close to even... maybe MC being a slight bit ahead.
Also MC was in europe during that TSL match. It's not like he was playing with delay or at a strange time.
There has been a lot of discussion about where the open winner deserves to be seeded. How will we know what the strength of the player will be? He could be the worst but luckiest player ever, or it could be someone who is a favorite to take the whole thing. A seed has to be picked for him, what is fair? 16th? 11th? 1st?
Answer is it doesn't matter what spot he deserves. The principle behind the seeding system is to both provide benefits to high performing competitors and provide the best scenarios for Championship finals. In honor of this principle I believe the open winner should be seeded 11th, no need to try to test where he should be.
Firstly, its clean and simple. No need to do any hubbub of attempting to determine the skill of the player. No complicated layers of extra games. No player politics and drama of player choice seeding. Clean, simple, understandable by everyone.
Secondly, we need to protect the 5 division leaders. Worst case scenario is that the open winner is so strong he is favored over the top seed. We don't care about the other scenarios because we have a situation that could jeopardize the honest performance of the top players to dodge this worst case scenario. Let the 6th seed play against the open winner. If the 6th seed doesn't like it, they need to win the division. Win the division and you don't have to worry about the crapshoot of an open winner. Money per round is on the line, you can't risk your top seed.
What seed the open winner deserves doesn't matter, its a matter of opinion anyway. Objectively we can say that if the open winner is 16th seed, the 1st seed becomes susceptible to excessive randomness. The top seed can be comfortable playing against the 15th place player in the NASL league, no pressure no deterrent. There is no risk playing the top seed against the 15th placed player. Seed the playoff winners 12-16 so that the division winners are confident and comfortable. The open player is a random factor and as such you insert him where the impact is not potentially disastrous, place him at 11th seed.
The system was made that way with more stable, future tournaments in mind.
Since players were invited to the first season of the NASL, the player pool isn't as strong as it will be. After several seasons of players dropping out and new players qualifying through the open tournament, the winner of the open tournament actually WILL (theoretically) be worse than the top 15 NASL players, or he would have already been in the NASL.
Again this is all theoretical, but over time the league should stabilize in terms of skill levels and it should work like this.
As for this season's tournament, what would you have them do? Stick them somewhere in the middle? How do you decide where? Are they better than the 14th seed but worse than the 12th seed but about the same as the 13th seed? What do you do then? Face it, this is the best way to go about this format.
I would allow the first place competitor to have a choice: Who would you rather play, the lowest seed (15th seed) or the open bracket winner?
If 1st place chooses the open bracket winner then the open bracket winner is the 16th seed. If 1st place chooses the 15th seed then that chosen player becomes the 16th seed, and the open bracket winner is moved to 15th.
Repeat for 2nd seed. Would you rather play the 14th seed or the Open bracket winner? Repeat for 3rd, 4th 5th as needed.
This allows the player with the highest seed to have some amount of control. This is fairly easy to understand: Keep bumping up the open bracket player until someone wants to play them.
I am pretty sure the winner of the open tournament is guaranteed to be a really skilled player, such as a Thorzain or a Korean. There is little to no chance that a terrible player can cheese there way through a 1024 man tournament. For a not so skilled player to win, the field would have to be a joke and the not so skilled player will have to get a little bit lucky. But considering the NASL prize pool is so huge, and the fact that a player like MVP or Thorzain or Kas are pretty likely to tear through the noobs, it seems very unlikely that the winner of the open tournament will be bad.
So, all I have to say is, I hope July forgets how to win.
OP definitely makes a valid point. The scope of the game has changed so much since the players were announced. Just look at Thorzain and Kas. Both players are vastly superior to anyone in the bottom 3 of each group, and both would prpbably be competitive for a top two seed in any of the groups. However, nobody knew who they were when they applied for the NASL.
You also have players like Moon, MMA, Alicia, and Losira. We knew that all 4 of these guys were good before the NASL, but since the tournament started, they've all turned on beast mode and are ripping through all of the competition.
On June 09 2011 11:48 AndAgain wrote: Yeah, I think OP makes a good point. It would be better to have the higher seeded players pick who they want to face.
I like this idea. Instead of having seed 1-15 plus the winner of the open bracket, seeds 1-8 should get seeded as is, and be allowed to pick who they play in the first round. So for example, whoever has the best record picks someone in the 9-15 plus open winner pool. Whoever comes in second picks next, and on and on until you only have 1 player left, and that player obviously plays #8. I think that this is a better system, since it gives a good reward to high finishing player, as well as giving more meaning to the players who finish top two in their respective groups.
On June 09 2011 17:06 Zeiryuu wrote: What if we let the players choose? Starting from the top... Ex: #1 Seed picks #14 Seed #2 Seed picks #3 Seed #4 Seed picks # 10 Seed And so on...
I like this idea. It's a great way to deal with the expected variance in results, while still protecting/rewarding the players who performed well during the season!
On June 10 2011 02:42 RmoteCntrld wrote: If you're a number one seed it shouldn't matter who you face first round, you should be able to beat anyone thrown in your way. Same goes for the open bracket since everyone seems to think that if that player was put in group play he'd be the one seed.
If a player like NesTea or Bomber goes through the open bracket (and I will take the odds a top Korean will win the open bracket), they will smash the #1 NASL seed
Just like Nestea or MC would SMASH Thorzain in the TSL...oh wait. Making assumptions like that after some of the huge upsets that recently happened is pretty pointless.
You know the bracket games are played live at location.
How well did Thorzain do vs MC in MLG?
There are things called flukes, heavily influenced by the fact that Koreans are playing early in the morning with cross-ocean server lag. You can keep hoping foreigners can compete, but TSL was a FLUKE. Every other invitational, live tourney, we've seen the top Koreans, in the words of Moon, "own white dudes".
Thorzain vs MC was played while MC was in europe because of Dreamhack.
On June 10 2011 03:23 h3nG wrote: At this point it doesn't seem like NASL will change it - which really is a shame. But what I am disappointed about is the fact that this issue was identified along time ago and it wasn't addressed.
If I were in the spot to be #1 seed and I am guaranteed #2 in my division, I would throw away my final game to avoid playing the Open bracket winner. MOST will agree on this also. It stupid to gamble on who the wildcard player is. It could (and most likely) be someone of MMA or Bomber caliber. And as good as everyone is in NASL, most are not that caliber...
That is the real problem with the seeding system. We could be seeing the most epic game in round one, and see NASL robbing one of the two potentially top players from the 2nd place spot because of it.
As for solution? One is to determine the true seeding of Open Bracket winner by putting him through a few games first...kinda like MLG.
I wouldn't be so pessimistic. NASL has a good record of making appropriate changes on the fly. Also I know NASL is paying attention to this thread. iNcontroL has actively responded to some posts in his own snarky sarcasm (please never change man!) and it means he is reading what we say. I have other evidence that others within NASL are also aware and paying attention.
Lets keep on trying to convince people. Maybe what we say will grab iNcontroL's attention as a player. Maybe he agrees with our point that if he were top seed he wouldn't want to play against the open winner. Maybe he helps plead our case to the heads of NASL.
Maybe what we say gets NASL's attention in terms of marketing. With an 11th seed open winner he would play the top seed in the final. Maybe NASL sees the value of the possible open vs top seed matchup that hypes itself.
To me this is similar to extended series at MLG (yes I'm prodding iNcontroL again ). I see a need for change here and I'm going to argue for it.
I have faith iNcontroL will bring this point up to the NASL team. I imagine the reason he hasn't said a word is because he agrees but hasn't made a point for it since he hasn't been able to convince or discuss this with the NASL team yet.
Many people have brought up very valid points on why this is so flawed. I haven't seen a strong argument for it yet. The only ones I've seen that may be valid is "it is what it is" - But I just don't see how changing this rule mid way will mess things up. As I see it, it's more detrimental to the league to NOT change it. Plus one of the things I like so much about NASL is their dedication to fix all the quarks.
On June 09 2011 20:52 piegasm wrote: Sooooo....what exactly would be the justification for giving the open bracket winner a higher seed than players who competed in the main league? The winner of the open bracket might be a player every bit as good as anyone in the main league. Or it could be a lesser player nobody has ever heard of who skates through because a top player loses early and leaves a big hole in their portion of the bracket.
Even if you were silly enough to decide you were going to give the open bracket winner a higher seed, how would you know which seed they deserved? The other 15 players have however many weeks worth of results in the league by which they're ranked. The open bracket winner doesn't have that so your idea is to do what? Just make a judgement call after the open bracket is done?
You've got people like TLO, Moonglade, Machine, Socke who have less than stellar results in their divisions but are quite capable of taking wins off of anyone else in the NASL. Say that unknown player gets through the open bracket. Are you going to walk up to one of those guys and say this random who dumb-lucked his way through the open bracket gets a higher seed than you? And which seed do you give him? And what do you base that decision on?
It's all good and well to say the person who gets through the open bracket will be a dangerous player. The problem is there's no empirical way to determine which seed they should get if not the last one on the grounds that they didn't participate in the main league.
To make an analogy to other tournament based things: tennis. Say a top player, Novak Djokavic or Andy Murray maybe, gets injured and can't play for a while. Their ranking falls. When they're ready to come back, their ranking has slipped and they just miss being the 32nd and final seed at Wimbledon. Brackets get drawn and Novak/Andy gets matched against Rafael Nadal 1st round. Sucks to be both players, absolutely. Sucks to be the fans who bought 2nd week Centre Court tickets because they won't be seeing one of these guys. Practically speaking you know that this player is better than 33rd in the world, but he doesn't have results which bear that out so here he is playing Rafa in the 1st round.
You can make an estimation off the "expected quality" of the player. Also, the element of uncertainty argued numerous times in posts above mine is a very solid argument.
Did you actually comprehend any of what I said? There is no objective way to determine the "expected quality" of a player. You try that and you get a complete shit storm, especially in the event that you get a surprise winner of the open bracket.
I don't know what legwork you think "objective" is doing here, but you can certainly make reasonable assumptions about the quality of the player to make it through the open bracket. First consider a very simplified scenario: the open bracket consists exclusively of the players currently in GSL Code S. Can we make any assumptions then, or is it still an utter crapshoot?
Obviously, that's not the scenario we're working with, but it should at least show you that there's no problem with estimating the quality of the winner in principle. At that point it becomes a question of who we expect to sign up, and the effect that we think randomness will have on the outcome.
Given that this is a tournament with a huge prize pool, I think it's very safe to assume that all the top players that can play will choose to do so. I'll add the caveat that some of the players in Korea may choose not to play due to lag, though I doubt this will dissuade many of them. Moreover, as we've seen from MLG open brackets, the pro players actually win very consistently against good-but-not-pro players. I always thought that many pros would be knocked out by fluky cheese strategies due to the sheer number of games they needed to play, but we've seen from both MLG Dallas and MLG Columbus that the pro players advance with remarkable consistency, rarely being eliminated by anyone other than another pro player.
All this to say: the winner of the open tournament is probably going to be extremely good. We can't know exactly how good, but it will almost certainly be a professional player from somewhere, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a top Korean player there. As the OP (and others) have argued in this thread, it's a bad thing for the tournament if the first match of the tournament is likely to eliminate one of the best players in it.
The best solution that I've seen is to seed the player somewhere in the middle of the pack. It insures against the scenario I outlined above, but it also doesn't give the open winner an especially privileged position. And I'd like to stress that nobody is advocating picking and choosing the bracket based on how good we think the players are after the results are in. The goal is to construct a tournament which is likely to produce these outcomes. The idea of seeding people through league play is a good method of achieving this -- the better players are more likely to win in their league games, so they will be seeded higher. But we have very good reason to assume that the winner of the open tournament will be better than many of those players, so it's good tournament design to seed them higher than #16.
With respect to your tennis analogy: that's simply a case of randomness having an impact on the outcome. The system is still designed to produce the right outcome, and that's all we're trying to achieve by amending this seeding rule. Nobody is saying "MC had lag issues so he's actually a better player than his results suggest. Let's seed him higher!" They're saying "the open bracket winner is probably going to be an exceptional player, so it makes sense to seed him higher."
The top 15 players from the main league are definitely going to be exceptional players, who've participated in the league for its entirety and earned a position based on their results as compared to everyone else's results. We know this because all the people currently participating are well known pros who have proven themselves both in the NASL and outside. The open bracket winner will probably be an exceptional player as well but could be a fluke. And you want to seed him higher than half the field based on "probably" and call that fair.
Even if the open bracket winner is a pro himself, on what grounds do you assume he's a better pro than the people he's going to out-seed? However good he is, why does he deserve to take precedence over players who competed in the main league and earned their results? The way I see it, someone with no results in a league doesn't deserve to be seeded higher in the playoffs of said league than someone who does have results.
I'd be willing to give very good odds on a bet that the open bracket winner will not be "a fluke". Even looking at MLG Columbus, which is fewer rounds than NASL and with four players advancing, we saw ThorZaIN, JulyZerg, MajOr, and Fenix advance. Considering that this tournament has several times the prize pool and that it's online, I expect to see every top NA/EU player that's not already in the league participating in the open tournament and many Koreans are likely to get involved as well; it's nearly guaranteed that an exceptionally strong player will qualify.
Regarding your point that the players participating in the league have "earned their seed", I have a few responses. First and foremost, I agree with you that those players should be rewarded for their performance in the league play. Indeed, the player that should be rewarded the most is the 1st seed, and it is largely in the interest of protecting him that people are calling for a change in the format. As the 1st seed, I'd find it extremely disheartening to find out that I worked hard for 9 weeks of league play only to be rewarded by having to face someone like NesTea.
Secondly, the winner of the open bracket does actually have to win ten consecutive Bo3's. To say that the league players earned their seed but that the open winner didn't is a little silly. Yes, some of the earlier matches are likely to be against amateurs but the player still has to go 10-0 in Bo3's while the league players might get by with something like 7-2. Admittedly, those games will have been played against other league players (which are arguably better than the open field, though I'm confident that the late stages of the open tournament will be extremely competitive) but it's still unfair to characterize it as some sort of lottery.
Again, though, I want to emphasize that it's not a question of what the open winner deserves, though you can make a case for them earning a decent seed. The issue is that the player who earned the 1st seed is likely to be forced to play a top Korean player (or another exceptional talent like ThorZaIN) that advances through the open bracket, and that isn't going to be fair to the 1st seed. As others have pointed out, it's also not good from the point of view of getting good matches deeper into the tournament, which is much better for the spectators.
On June 10 2011 02:42 RmoteCntrld wrote: If you're a number one seed it shouldn't matter who you face first round, you should be able to beat anyone thrown in your way. Same goes for the open bracket since everyone seems to think that if that player was put in group play he'd be the one seed.
If a player like NesTea or Bomber goes through the open bracket (and I will take the odds a top Korean will win the open bracket), they will smash the #1 NASL seed
Just like Nestea or MC would SMASH Thorzain in the TSL...oh wait. Making assumptions like that after some of the huge upsets that recently happened is pretty pointless.
You know the bracket games are played live at location.
How well did Thorzain do vs MC in MLG?
There are things called flukes, heavily influenced by the fact that Koreans are playing early in the morning with cross-ocean server lag. You can keep hoping foreigners can compete, but TSL was a FLUKE. Every other invitational, live tourney, we've seen the top Koreans, in the words of Moon, "own white dudes".
Thorzain actually beat MC 2-1 and would have knockout MC if not for the unfair extended rule so I woulnt call Thorzain a flux
And also MC was in europe at the time so there was no lag..
You really shoudl try to keep up with facts when you wanna spawn crap
On June 10 2011 05:59 h3nG wrote: I have faith iNcontroL will bring this point up to the NASL team. I imagine the reason he hasn't said a word is because he agrees but hasn't made a point for it since he hasn't been able to convince or discuss this with the NASL team yet.
Many people have brought up very valid points on why this is so flawed. I haven't seen a strong argument for it yet. The only ones I've seen that may be valid is "it is what it is" - But I just don't see how changing this rule mid way will mess things up. As I see it, it's more detrimental to the league to NOT change it. Plus one of the things I like so much about NASL is their dedication to fix all the quarks.
I agree entirely. I have seen one valid argument that supports 16th seed, the argument that the NASL players deserve 1st-15th seeds. It is opinion based though and is just as valid the other way.
I guess we will just see what NASL does with the information we have offered.
Yeah the problem is, you can't seed based on who might be the open winner. You have to seed based on what is going to be for certain. Because the open winner is not yet determined, nor will the open winner have any match history or standing in the NASL, then they are the de facto lowest seed based on the information NASL has that came from the results of the season. Yeah the open winner could be Bomber, but since they don't know who will in fact be the open winner, and based on the fact that Bomber has no current standing with NASL, it is the most unbiased and fair way to seed based on the information that can be taken strictly from the tournament results so far.
On June 10 2011 06:30 Rasun wrote: Yeah the problem is, you can't seed based on who might be the open winner.
You make a very good point. My counter argument is that even though we do not know, we can be almost be certain that he will be a very strong opponent because it is open to everyone. I think most people will agree that the open bracket winner will likely be the top 3, if not the #1 player in the Finals.
As support to the argument, I will point out that even if he turns out to be a weak opponent, the wildcard factor is really screwed up. The first seed has to literally gamble on who his seed is or what his opponent's race will be.
So no matter how you look at it, being in first seed just sucks...which is very counter intuitive and unfair.
On June 10 2011 06:30 Rasun wrote: Yeah the problem is, you can't seed based on who might be the open winner. You have to seed based on what is going to be for certain. Because the open winner is not yet determined, nor will the open winner have any match history or standing in the NASL, then they are the de facto lowest seed based on the information NASL has that came from the results of the season. Yeah the open winner could be Bomber, but since they don't know who will in fact be the open winner, and based on the fact that Bomber has no current standing with NASL, it is the most unbiased and fair way to seed based on the information that can be taken strictly from the tournament results so far.
Seeding exists fundamentally to provide a strong tournament setup, not specifically to rank players. You obviously can't rank an unknown player. Furthermore the ranks of the players are determined by the results of the tournament not the seeding. 11th seed or 16th seed in this case is a placement value, not a ranking. The argument is that seeding him 16th hurts the tournament setup by inflicting randomness to the top seeds path. 11th seed promotes better tournament flow.
On June 10 2011 06:22 PantsB wrote: I think the best option is let the winner pick his opponent. It even adds a bit of drama/storyline.
I think this is by far the best solution. It'd give a lot of value to higher seeds and be interesting for the fans, especially if done at the offline tournament
On June 10 2011 02:34 Jayrod wrote: Okay we'll see if people agree with this sentiment if Nestea or a similarly skilled player wins the online qualifier.
I really liked the idea of letting the #1 seed choose his his opponent, then letting #2 choose his until all of the matches are set. I think it leads to a really cool dynamic and should be considered. If you're going to have a convoluted set up in the first place you might as well be all the way convoluted.
I mean really... why not have 4 divisions of 12 players or something, cut the league off at 48 for next season and take the top 4 from each league for the playoffs... simple, clean, resembles REAL sports. I dont see why their are 3 different criteria for making the playoffs in this league... its like they bent over backwards to avoid the conversation that "X Division is harder than Y division", but that conversation takes place in literally every sport.
NASL "bracketology", for lack of a better term, has been so confusing that it completely removed the whole sensation found in REAL sports of just following your team throughout the season (not just during the last week or two when all the "if, then" statements came out about the results of the league games) and watching them jockey for the playoff spots.
And if someone like me wins, that is completely awful?
I actually really like that idea as well. I can see a few small issues with it like the top players only having to play their best matchup or something but the idea in general is pretty cool.
Well as it stands your reward for having the best record in NASL is getting to roll the dice on the quality of your opponent, whereas the #2 guy gets the 15th best player out of 16 that season
Whos going to play in the open bracket? With such a huge prize pool for the final tournament, would it be wise to assume the likes of Mvp, Nestea, MarineKing?
On June 12 2011 11:25 W2 wrote: Whos going to play in the open bracket? With such a huge prize pool for the final tournament, would it be wise to assume the likes of Mvp, Nestea, MarineKing?
Yeah... it seems like it should be someone really good, but I don't think anyone at all near that caliber has signed up (unless they're using an alias).
This type of seeding works fine when the top 50 ranked players are actually the 50 best players in the world. I would guess half of the actual top 50 didn't play in the NASL so when one of them wins the open tournament, it's going to be a disaster when they play the top seed. Imagine if Federer didn't show up to one tournament and because of that he was "unranked" for the next tournament so when he won the tournament with all the other unranked people he faced Nadal in the first round... that's ridiculous.
I'm pretty sure whoever wins the open bracket is going to be favored over the #1 ranked NASL player
Personally I think the top notch Koreans would be insane to ignore the open tournament... first prize is $50k which is an insane amount. If I'm Nestea I'm thinking "hey, I'm the best player in the world... wtf am I doing not trying to win this".
How do you know?? If so, I hope he signs up for NASL open.
There's a thread about it. He uses the exact same hotkeys as MVP and someone asked him in a ladder match if he was MKP, he said no, they asked who he was then, and he said MVP.
yup, i can't believe people are arguing the other way, this is what was obviously going to happen
Eh, as much as I would like to say they are throwing games because it helps our argument I don't think that is what is happening. I think what is more likely happening is that Select didn't put full effort into practicing for the match because it didn't mean a lot to him.
Also, I don't think it is too late to change the rule. I don't think until after the playoffs or open tournament (whichever comes first) starts is it too late.
I would love to see it as a simple change too (just open winner as 11th seed). I don't like the seeds choosing opponents idea, too complicated (people will claim it isn't but it is).
The "top seed" is pretty arbitrary anyway as it's based on the player's performance in one of 5 groups. It could easily happen that the top overall seed is a "worse player" than all the other seeds who did not share a group with him if the group is in any way easier.
I think if the seed were based on performance against everyone in the tournament in some way (e.g. through an elimination bracket) then it would be fair to claim that playing the open winner is almost certainly a disadvantage. This isn't the case though and you have to seed it somehow - I don't think some midway solution like having #6 seed play the open winner is any better at all because if you can justify the OP for #1 seed you can justify it for all but 15th seed. Having 1 vs 14, 2 vs 13, etc. and 15 vs open winner would be quite odd and might reward the last seed.
I don't know the prizemoney distribution but I do hope it goes deep enough to reward the top group performers enough even if they are taken out in round 1 of the playoffs.
The problem is being overlooked by many people. Bracket structure is inherently flawed for establishing a true ranked order of skill. Until someone opens up to the idea of drawing out a completely new system, we'll always be stuck with these tournament results that we have.
I think the best way would be allowing the 1-8th seeds to choose their opponent from the 9-16th seeds in order from 1st to 8th, so the 1st seed can choose anyone from 9-16, and the 8th seed gets left with whomever 1-7 did not choose.
As seen with some recent matches, players either don't want the #1 seed, or don't care about being the #1 seed, both of which lead to some "I'm not trying" matches. I think allowing the top seeded players to choose their opponent from the bottom seeded players would provide incentive to try all the way to the end of the tournament.
On June 12 2011 14:03 Jinsho wrote: No-one needs a "true ranked order of skill", we just need some brackets for a tournament. Doing highest seed <-> lowest seed is perfectly fine.
Not when people actively don't want to be the highest seed, or when people don't care enough to try to be the highest seed.
I think for the next tournament, they should consider allowing the top seeds to choose their opponent.
Even being knocked out in the ro16 guarantees you $500 prizemoney + $500 travel stipend. For people having to travel intercontinental you probably need to make it to ro8 to make money out of it (I think it's 1.5k + 500). After that the money skyrockets, even 4th place is the same as winning MLG.
edit.
After reading Xeris' thread on the Open tournament I realise the top 8 Open players also qualify for season 2. Plenty more incentive for Korean entries.
On June 12 2011 14:03 Jinsho wrote: No-one needs a "true ranked order of skill", we just need some brackets for a tournament. Doing highest seed <-> lowest seed is perfectly fine.
I've never understood the attitude against having objective results. That "we just need some brackets for a tournament" flies in the face of actually finding out a true winner when the system itself is flawed. Advocating such a thing is the same logic as simply saying we just need one map per match to be played.
On June 09 2011 14:04 VPCursed wrote: dunno why they would do this.. rofl.. who the fuck would want to be top seed in the NASL?
Apparently, some guy named Select, another called Julyzerg and some Squirtle do. I don't know man, I wish they were all like you and liked the easy way out instead of y'know, actually enjoying some competition, cause in the end, it is not at all what the NASL is, a competition.
This post makes me laugh my ass off because both July and SeleCT effectively threw their most recent games.
This actually makes the most sense imo. this way you dont have a player like Select throwing a few games so he doesnt need to face an unknown player.
Not to mention the #1 overall seed will get one week less of prep time for his opponent. Every other player will know their opponent by this time tomorrow. There is absolutely no advantage to being #1 seed at the moment.
Edit: actually the higher seeds won't know until next week since they play the playoff winners which is another disadvantage even for them, but the #1 seed has to wait even longer than they do. I understand the concept behind NASL's system, in practice it plays out poorly though.
On June 12 2011 13:52 deL wrote: The "top seed" is pretty arbitrary anyway as it's based on the player's performance in one of 5 groups. It could easily happen that the top overall seed is a "worse player" than all the other seeds who did not share a group with him if the group is in any way easier.
I think if the seed were based on performance against everyone in the tournament in some way (e.g. through an elimination bracket) then it would be fair to claim that playing the open winner is almost certainly a disadvantage. This isn't the case though and you have to seed it somehow - I don't think some midway solution like having #6 seed play the open winner is any better at all because if you can justify the OP for #1 seed you can justify it for all but 15th seed. Having 1 vs 14, 2 vs 13, etc. and 15 vs open winner would be quite odd and might reward the last seed.
I don't know the prizemoney distribution but I do hope it goes deep enough to reward the top group performers enough even if they are taken out in round 1 of the playoffs.
Your reasoning is not entirely true. I can justify that open winner playing against the top seed is bad in a way that it only holds true for 1st-5th seed. The one thing as a player that you have full control over is whether or not you win your own division (inequalities in division strength makes it hard to control getting 1st in league). Winning your division could cause you to be top seed and play the open winner. Playing below your level can get you away from playing the open seed. This is the case for 1st-5th.
If the 6th seed plays the open winner, the method to dodge this match is to play better, which is better for the league in general. Players will not intentionally drop to 3rd place in division because it takes them out of the championship and puts them into a risky playoff.
Open winner as the 6th seed creates a motivation to play up as opposed to play down, big difference.
On June 12 2011 14:03 Jinsho wrote: No-one needs a "true ranked order of skill", we just need some brackets for a tournament. Doing highest seed <-> lowest seed is perfectly fine.
I've never understood the attitude against having objective results. That "we just need some brackets for a tournament" flies in the face of actually finding out a true winner when the system itself is flawed. Advocating such a thing is the same logic as simply saying we just need one map per match to be played.
We don't need a true ranked order of skill, but we don't just need brackets either. We don't have to get hung up on making the ultimate skill ranking, but we do need a bracket that accomplishes a goal.
The goal of a bracket is to provide a strong tournament setup and design. Tournaments do not just determine the winner of the tournament, but they also entertain spectators and pay participants based off of performance. As such, the main goal of the bracket is to allow stronger players to get into the deeper rounds of the tournament. Its good for the players, its good for the spectators, its good for the organizers.
Top seed vs open winner is counter to the goal of the bracket system. The absolute ranking of those particular players is not important and is not determinable. Focus on accomplishing the goal of the bracket. I feel that open winner being 11th seed best accomplishes that goal.
On June 09 2011 11:28 jalstar wrote: I think it should be:
1-10: Top 2 of each division 11: Open Bracket winner 12-16: Wild Card Playoff winners
This actually makes the most sense imo. this way you dont have a player like Select throwing a few games so he doesnt need to face an unknown player.
I don't know why Select did it. _ANY_ player in the top16 offline final will be a hard opponent. So I don't think it was necessary from him / gave him any advantage
On June 09 2011 11:28 jalstar wrote: I think it should be:
1-10: Top 2 of each division 11: Open Bracket winner 12-16: Wild Card Playoff winners
This actually makes the most sense imo. this way you dont have a player like Select throwing a few games so he doesnt need to face an unknown player.
I don't know why Select did it. _ANY_ player in the top16 offline final will be a hard opponent. So I don't think it was necessary from him / gave him any advantage
Because if it is a top Korean who win the Open Tournament, he'll be the best player among the 16. The 15th seeds will be under the lvl of a Bomber/MMA/Nestea/MvP/Mkp, and by a certain margin. And if it is Dimaga/Kas, if you're not a P you're in a bad spot too (especially July, if he faces Dimaga he's out). Thorzain is better than half of this players too, at least.
On June 09 2011 11:28 jalstar wrote: I think it should be:
1-10: Top 2 of each division 11: Open Bracket winner 12-16: Wild Card Playoff winners
This actually makes the most sense imo. this way you dont have a player like Select throwing a few games so he doesnt need to face an unknown player.
I don't know why Select did it. _ANY_ player in the top16 offline final will be a hard opponent. So I don't think it was necessary from him / gave him any advantage
Because if it is a top Korean who win the Open Tournament, he'll be the best player among the 16. The 15th seeds will be under the lvl of a Bomber/MMA/Nestea/MvP/Mkp, and by a certain margin. And if it is Dimaga/Kas, if you're not a P you're in a bad spot too (especially July, if he faces Dimaga he's out). Thorzain is better than half of this players too, at least.
I don't care if the winner of the open tournament is a korean or a non-korean. It's obvious that only one of the best will make it through. But everyone else in the offline tournament will be awesome as well. My point is: it doesn't matter if you for example don't get matched against Dimaga when you then draw Sen to play against..
Yeah, but you still want to maximize your winnings. I am pretty sure all players in this tournament accepted that realistically they have a small chance of winning (even the eventual champion, for example Thorzain did not have a 100% chance of winning at the start of TSL3 either). They are all interested in maximizing their earnings (and they should be). Not because they are money grabbing bastards, but because that is what everybody in their place would and should do, that is what the money is for in the end, an incentive to get good players create good games.
Besides, if you are second best skill wise, and you can choose whether you lose to the best in the round of 16 or in the final, that does not seem like a difficult choice to make.
Sure anyone might be able to beat anyone in the top tier, but there is still an odds game at play, and when you multiply odds with expected earnings, I can guarantee you that it is advantageous to maximize your chances of getting just one round further in the tournament. And the best format from a viewer and player perspective is one where maximizing your chances of getting further depend on you playing to the best of your ability, not on losing to get to the proper place in the rankings.
On June 09 2011 11:28 jalstar wrote: I think it should be:
1-10: Top 2 of each division 11: Open Bracket winner 12-16: Wild Card Playoff winners
This actually makes the most sense imo. this way you dont have a player like Select throwing a few games so he doesnt need to face an unknown player.
I don't know why Select did it. _ANY_ player in the top16 offline final will be a hard opponent. So I don't think it was necessary from him / gave him any advantage
Because if it is a top Korean who win the Open Tournament, he'll be the best player among the 16. The 15th seeds will be under the lvl of a Bomber/MMA/Nestea/MvP/Mkp, and by a certain margin. And if it is Dimaga/Kas, if you're not a P you're in a bad spot too (especially July, if he faces Dimaga he's out). Thorzain is better than half of this players too, at least.
I don't care if the winner of the open tournament is a korean or a non-korean. It's obvious that only one of the best will make it through. But everyone else in the offline tournament will be awesome as well. My point is: it doesn't matter if you for example don't get matched against Dimaga when you then draw Sen to play against..
Tell me who is at the level of Bomber/MVP/Nestea/MKP/Polt except MC in the 15 seeds in NASL. I'm curious.
On June 09 2011 11:28 jalstar wrote: I think it should be:
1-10: Top 2 of each division 11: Open Bracket winner 12-16: Wild Card Playoff winners
This actually makes the most sense imo. this way you dont have a player like Select throwing a few games so he doesnt need to face an unknown player.
I don't know why Select did it. _ANY_ player in the top16 offline final will be a hard opponent. So I don't think it was necessary from him / gave him any advantage
Because if it is a top Korean who win the Open Tournament, he'll be the best player among the 16. The 15th seeds will be under the lvl of a Bomber/MMA/Nestea/MvP/Mkp, and by a certain margin. And if it is Dimaga/Kas, if you're not a P you're in a bad spot too (especially July, if he faces Dimaga he's out). Thorzain is better than half of this players too, at least.
I don't care if the winner of the open tournament is a korean or a non-korean. It's obvious that only one of the best will make it through. But everyone else in the offline tournament will be awesome as well. My point is: it doesn't matter if you for example don't get matched against Dimaga when you then draw Sen to play against..
Tell me who is at the level of Bomber/MVP/Nestea/MKP/Polt except MC in the 15 seeds in NASL. I'm curious.
who of the guys you named actually signed up for the tournament? Last time I checked no korean signed up.
On June 09 2011 11:28 jalstar wrote: I think it should be:
1-10: Top 2 of each division 11: Open Bracket winner 12-16: Wild Card Playoff winners
This actually makes the most sense imo. this way you dont have a player like Select throwing a few games so he doesnt need to face an unknown player.
I don't know why Select did it. _ANY_ player in the top16 offline final will be a hard opponent. So I don't think it was necessary from him / gave him any advantage
Because if it is a top Korean who win the Open Tournament, he'll be the best player among the 16. The 15th seeds will be under the lvl of a Bomber/MMA/Nestea/MvP/Mkp, and by a certain margin. And if it is Dimaga/Kas, if you're not a P you're in a bad spot too (especially July, if he faces Dimaga he's out). Thorzain is better than half of this players too, at least.
I don't care if the winner of the open tournament is a korean or a non-korean. It's obvious that only one of the best will make it through. But everyone else in the offline tournament will be awesome as well. My point is: it doesn't matter if you for example don't get matched against Dimaga when you then draw Sen to play against..
Tell me who is at the level of Bomber/MVP/Nestea/MKP/Polt except MC in the 15 seeds in NASL. I'm curious.
who if the guys you named actually signed up for the tournament? Last time I checked no korean signed up.
On June 09 2011 11:28 jalstar wrote: I think it should be:
1-10: Top 2 of each division 11: Open Bracket winner 12-16: Wild Card Playoff winners
This actually makes the most sense imo. this way you dont have a player like Select throwing a few games so he doesnt need to face an unknown player.
I don't know why Select did it. _ANY_ player in the top16 offline final will be a hard opponent. So I don't think it was necessary from him / gave him any advantage
Because if it is a top Korean who win the Open Tournament, he'll be the best player among the 16. The 15th seeds will be under the lvl of a Bomber/MMA/Nestea/MvP/Mkp, and by a certain margin. And if it is Dimaga/Kas, if you're not a P you're in a bad spot too (especially July, if he faces Dimaga he's out). Thorzain is better than half of this players too, at least.
I don't care if the winner of the open tournament is a korean or a non-korean. It's obvious that only one of the best will make it through. But everyone else in the offline tournament will be awesome as well. My point is: it doesn't matter if you for example don't get matched against Dimaga when you then draw Sen to play against..
Tell me who is at the level of Bomber/MVP/Nestea/MKP/Polt except MC in the 15 seeds in NASL. I'm curious.
who if the guys you named actually signed up for the tournament? Last time I checked no korean signed up.
yeah, none of the players you listed will apply.
That's why MVP is currently owning the NA ladder maybe. And with 50k$ on the line, some of them are probably going to apply. That's maybe why Select and July lost their game on purpose too...
There are two arguments that seem to be recurring here.
(1) The open winner is obviously the lowest seed.
WHAaaa.....? The dude who beats 1,000 other entrants in a series of win-or-go-home matches is considered a lower seed than the dude who beat up on Artosis and Grubby? (I love both of you, but ...)
(2) There isn't actually a Korean signed up for the open tournament so it's no biggie.
There are still some gnarly possibilities already. EGDeMusliM coming back from the DL could be ferocious, sixjaxMajOr could get some TvZ practice in and stomp some nerds, and ThorZaIN would be a nightmare in the first round of the championship.
I tend to like the insertion into the bracket at 11 as suggested above (^_^)-b, but realize that NASL may not feasibly implement changes to the schematic until the second season. Keep up the amazing work, NASL folk!!
On June 14 2011 23:28 Rammstorm wrote: So much fear that Ret faces a hard opponent? Oh cmon at least say it directly. Please don't let Ret play vs [Insert random good player]! Easy.
This is the first season ever and you expect seeding to have sorted it's self out yet? Are you mental! If they undermined this commonly used(and for good reason) seeding process then they will have to evaluate the open bracket winner seed every single season.
Down the line it's just going to cause more problems doing this(read: people like you finding an excuse to bitch) rather than having a set standard they can fall back on.
All we should really be asking them is for NASL to take the open bracket results and think wisely about how they will be incorporated into their invitations next season
wow, h3ng makes a completely legitimate post, a point which I agree with, and the entire first page shot him down lol. amazing.
im not gonna bother reading the next 11 pages so hopefully some people actually agreed with him because he's right, odds are the open winner will be a good player..
I think this is pretty awful as well.. Who ever comes out of that open, is probably going to be a fucking beast.. 100k on the line, every starcraft 2 player in the world who isn't already participating, would be fighting for that spot.. I wonder if this rule was described on forehand before groups were played out? Im pretty fucking sure Ret would have had an incentitive to just throw his last series because of this.. And no, I don't considder it bad moral to do so, if it puts you in a harder place to go out as #1, it's clearly the seeding rules that is bad and the player being #1 has the choice to be in that #1 spot or not.
I agree with the points made that because it's a North American based league. I see no reason why this championship bracket should not be seeded differently. If you invited all the best players in the world sure, but when you SELECTIVELY deny players out that are clearly better than some of the North American counterparts selected for season 1, I don't understand how you can justify that seed #1vs#16 isn't a harder matchup than #2 vs #15.
The open bracket should not be scaled in the championship stage as the weakest seed in the league. We all know the players for this league were selectively chosen and NASL didn't invite more Koreans and other higher skilled players for group play in the league, instead opting for Artosis and a few other North American players who quite frankly aren't as good (no offense). It is an accepted fact this tournament chose localizing players to down play issues such as latency and time zone conflicts week to week. If you're going to make the open tournament global that should be accounted for.
Some of the page 1 attacks on the thread starter were hilariously illogical. My favorites went something along the lines of "um, top seeded player plays the weakest player, which would be the winner of the open bracket, just like how tennis player gets easy matches." The entire point here is that anyone who emerges from the open bracket bloodbath is NOT going to be the weakest player.
I think NASL should have followed in the footsteps of the exchange program; the Koreans who were brought to MLG were not assumed to be the highest or lowest seeds, but somewhere in the middle. The arguments on this thread which included the worst performing players in NASL doesn't really apply to finals seeding; those players wouldn't have made it through the open tournament, either.
I can't help but feel vindicated after seeing that the open bracket semifinals include PuMa, Clide, RevivaL, and aLive. Like so many of us predicted, Ret's strong performance in the regular season is rewarded by seeding him against a top Korean player.
On June 23 2011 14:30 travis wrote: wow, h3ng makes a completely legitimate post, a point which I agree with, and the entire first page shot him down lol. amazing.
im not gonna bother reading the next 11 pages so hopefully some people actually agreed with him because he's right, odds are the open winner will be a good player..
So you'd rather be the #2 seed and play against MC than play against aLive/PuMa/Clide ?
That logic makes 0 sense.
If you look at the players in the finals, almost every matchup has a player of equal or greater skill than the top 4 players of the Open. Arguably, the only matchup that's clearly ideal for any player is getting the #3 seed (vs DarkForcE).
On June 23 2011 14:30 travis wrote: wow, h3ng makes a completely legitimate post, a point which I agree with, and the entire first page shot him down lol. amazing.
im not gonna bother reading the next 11 pages so hopefully some people actually agreed with him because he's right, odds are the open winner will be a good player..
So you'd rather be the #2 seed and play against MC than play against aLive/PuMa/Clide ?
That logic makes 0 sense.
If you look at the players in the finals, almost every matchup has a player of equal or greater skill than the top 4 players of the Open. Arguably, the only matchup that's clearly ideal for any player is getting the #3 seed (vs DarkForcE).
I think the point is that the "reward" of being #1 seed is heavily mitigated because the quality of the player emerging from the open bracket is almost positively going to be better than some of the other playoff seeds. (clide, puma, revival are all VERY solid players )
Some one suggested the open bracket player take seed 11 which i think is a genius solution personally
On June 23 2011 14:30 travis wrote: wow, h3ng makes a completely legitimate post, a point which I agree with, and the entire first page shot him down lol. amazing.
im not gonna bother reading the next 11 pages so hopefully some people actually agreed with him because he's right, odds are the open winner will be a good player..
So you'd rather be the #2 seed and play against MC than play against aLive/PuMa/Clide ?
That logic makes 0 sense.
If you look at the players in the finals, almost every matchup has a player of equal or greater skill than the top 4 players of the Open. Arguably, the only matchup that's clearly ideal for any player is getting the #3 seed (vs DarkForcE).
No one would have guessed MC to be the 15th before the tournament started. But everyone knew that the winner of the open tournament would definitely be stronger than some of the people in the top 16, and definitely not the worst.
On June 23 2011 14:30 travis wrote: wow, h3ng makes a completely legitimate post, a point which I agree with, and the entire first page shot him down lol. amazing.
im not gonna bother reading the next 11 pages so hopefully some people actually agreed with him because he's right, odds are the open winner will be a good player..
So you'd rather be the #2 seed and play against MC than play against aLive/PuMa/Clide ?
That logic makes 0 sense.
If you look at the players in the finals, almost every matchup has a player of equal or greater skill than the top 4 players of the Open. Arguably, the only matchup that's clearly ideal for any player is getting the #3 seed (vs DarkForcE).
I think the point is that the "reward" of being #1 seed is heavily mitigated because the quality of the player emerging from the open bracket is almost positively going to be better than some of the other playoff seeds. (clide, puma, revival are all VERY solid players )
Some one suggested the open bracket player take seed 11 which i think is a genius solution personally
Why is the 11th seed better than the 16th seed? One of these open players is significantly better than Zenio? Or July, or Moon, or SeleCT, or White-Ra? At the Top 16, every single player is insanely good. It's not like there's gonna be a weak guy. Again, the weakest player probably in most people's opinion would be DarkForcE, but even then he played through the season, and won a tough playoff bracket to get to the final. He's really good.
Also, you can never predict how the league will end up, or what the standings will be.
Xeris's point is valid. In the long run more and more Koreans are going to participate and be seeded into NASL's. Which means guys like MC, July, Bomber, etc are 1-16 seeds while the Open winner will be some other Korean dudes. So basically it'll all even out and NASL will start calling itself KSL.
On June 23 2011 14:30 travis wrote: wow, h3ng makes a completely legitimate post, a point which I agree with, and the entire first page shot him down lol. amazing.
im not gonna bother reading the next 11 pages so hopefully some people actually agreed with him because he's right, odds are the open winner will be a good player..
So you'd rather be the #2 seed and play against MC than play against aLive/PuMa/Clide ?
That logic makes 0 sense.
If you look at the players in the finals, almost every matchup has a player of equal or greater skill than the top 4 players of the Open. Arguably, the only matchup that's clearly ideal for any player is getting the #3 seed (vs DarkForcE).
I think the point is that the "reward" of being #1 seed is heavily mitigated because the quality of the player emerging from the open bracket is almost positively going to be better than some of the other playoff seeds. (clide, puma, revival are all VERY solid players )
Some one suggested the open bracket player take seed 11 which i think is a genius solution personally
Why is the 11th seed better than the 16th seed? One of these open players is significantly better than Zenio? Or July, or Moon, or SeleCT, or White-Ra? At the Top 16, every single player is insanely good. It's not like there's gonna be a weak guy. Again, the weakest player probably in most people's opinion would be DarkForcE, but even then he played through the season, and won a tough playoff bracket to get to the final. He's really good.
Also, you can never predict how the league will end up, or what the standings will be.
You can't just say "Well, we don't know how the league will turn out, so it's not a problem." Using the results of a 10 week league, and subsequently partial results of the open tournament, to justify a rule that was made in advance of said events (e.g. pointing to MC being the 15th seed) is fallacious. We can only look at this rule upfront; seeing that in general you would expect the 16th seed to be of higher strength than the 15th seed due to the number of top players which would have to compete in the open bracket due to exclusion from the regular season. Putting something like that into the hands of random chance is a tenuous choice at best.
On June 23 2011 14:30 travis wrote: wow, h3ng makes a completely legitimate post, a point which I agree with, and the entire first page shot him down lol. amazing.
im not gonna bother reading the next 11 pages so hopefully some people actually agreed with him because he's right, odds are the open winner will be a good player..
So you'd rather be the #2 seed and play against MC than play against aLive/PuMa/Clide ?
That logic makes 0 sense.
If you look at the players in the finals, almost every matchup has a player of equal or greater skill than the top 4 players of the Open. Arguably, the only matchup that's clearly ideal for any player is getting the #3 seed (vs DarkForcE).
I think the point is that the "reward" of being #1 seed is heavily mitigated because the quality of the player emerging from the open bracket is almost positively going to be better than some of the other playoff seeds. (clide, puma, revival are all VERY solid players )
Some one suggested the open bracket player take seed 11 which i think is a genius solution personally
Why is the 11th seed better than the 16th seed? One of these open players is significantly better than Zenio? Or July, or Moon, or SeleCT, or White-Ra? At the Top 16, every single player is insanely good. It's not like there's gonna be a weak guy. Again, the weakest player probably in most people's opinion would be DarkForcE, but even then he played through the season, and won a tough playoff bracket to get to the final. He's really good.
Also, you can never predict how the league will end up, or what the standings will be.
Seeding in SC2 is funny like that. It means almost nothing, most of the time. The whole point of the system, and the only reason it is considered fair, is because the #2 seed should technically be better than the #15 seed, it should be a reward for the players/teams that played better in the tournament. And ussually it works fine, in most sport it's easy to see a diference between the top 16. Since that doesn't happen in SC2, it's basically as fair as a random draw. That's also one of the reasons a lot of people don't like tournaments that give a HUGE advantage based on seedings, like MLG.
That doesn't mean you can't expect people to see it as the #1 being better than the #15. That's the premisse of the system, and the only way it makes any sense. Why are you calling him the number 1 if he is not playing better?
By your argument, what's the point of the system? Why is it any better than a randon draw? You are basically saying seeding is meaningless, which I can understand, but I don't think it's ever a great point to defend your tournament format.
I'm not sure if there is a better format, the way 1 player is introduced from the open tournament makes it really strange, so I can really see what you are saying, but I suppose you also understand what everyone is saying.
On June 27 2011 03:32 vnlegend wrote: Xeris's point is valid. In the long run more and more Koreans are going to participate and be seeded into NASL's. Which means guys like MC, July, Bomber, etc are 1-16 seeds while the Open winner will be some other Korean dudes. So basically it'll all even out and NASL will start calling itself KSL.
You are assuming that foreigners will just roll over and die instead of learning how to train better. We are just starting to see things like team houses form outside korea, there is a definite possibility of foreigners still being able to be good enough to beat koreans regularly.
i don't get the issue. there's no real obvious weak spots, and you're going to have to beat multiple superelite players at some point if you want to win the $50k. sure, it sucks if you run into someone who's slightly better than everyone else in the first round, but that's a fault with having an ultra-crapshooty final format rather than who you've actually been drawn against
The first seasons are part of a transitory state. Remember the Top8 of the OpenTournament get into Season2 so with each iteration the better players will be in the main season and top seed will probably give an easier opponent. It is a good system for steady state. With each iteration it corrects its own flaws.
I only watch the GSL but ocasionally tune to the NASL and always has some good games each day.
Geez another Korean in the grand finals. I didn't know that GSL changed venues.
So including the other Koreans in the top 8 of the open bracket, I'm counting about 14 Koreans who are definitely getting an invite to the next season. I'm also thinking more Koreans will get in via qualfiers.
Now i'm not sure how the qualifier works.. but if we simply go by the same stats as the open bracket (lets say another 5 get in). That's 19 Koreans in the next season out of 50 players in the group stages.
Correct me if I'm wrong.. but isn't this what the tournament admins NOT want? )something about it being a North American tournament and all that jazz).
On July 07 2011 06:17 thepuppyassassin wrote: Geez another Korean in the grand finals. I didn't know that GSL changed venues.
So including the other Koreans in the top 8 of the open bracket, I'm counting about 14 Koreans who are definitely getting an invite to the next season. I'm also thinking more Koreans will get in via qualfiers.
Now i'm not sure how the qualifier works.. but if we simply go by the same stats as the open bracket (lets say another 5 get in). That's 19 Koreans in the next season out of 50 players in the group stages.
Correct me if I'm wrong.. but isn't this what the tournament admins NOT want? )something about it being a North American tournament and all that jazz).
NA means the games are played on the NA servers, that's it
Anyone willing to play on our servers can participate.
On July 07 2011 06:17 thepuppyassassin wrote: Geez another Korean in the grand finals. I didn't know that GSL changed venues.
So including the other Koreans in the top 8 of the open bracket, I'm counting about 14 Koreans who are definitely getting an invite to the next season. I'm also thinking more Koreans will get in via qualfiers.
Now i'm not sure how the qualifier works.. but if we simply go by the same stats as the open bracket (lets say another 5 get in). That's 19 Koreans in the next season out of 50 players in the group stages.
Correct me if I'm wrong.. but isn't this what the tournament admins NOT want? )something about it being a North American tournament and all that jazz).
NA means the games are played on the NA servers, that's it
Anyone willing to play on our servers can participate.
The point hes trying to make is, its a north american league and eventually the league is going to be dominated by mostly koreans.
It would be like the gsl being dominated by over 50% north americans, do you think thats something the gsl would want?
On July 07 2011 06:17 thepuppyassassin wrote: Geez another Korean in the grand finals. I didn't know that GSL changed venues.
So including the other Koreans in the top 8 of the open bracket, I'm counting about 14 Koreans who are definitely getting an invite to the next season. I'm also thinking more Koreans will get in via qualfiers.
Now i'm not sure how the qualifier works.. but if we simply go by the same stats as the open bracket (lets say another 5 get in). That's 19 Koreans in the next season out of 50 players in the group stages.
Correct me if I'm wrong.. but isn't this what the tournament admins NOT want? )something about it being a North American tournament and all that jazz).
Your numbers are a bit off. In the main bracket of NASL1 there are 9 koreans (1 of which is select... so 8.5 koreans? lol). In the open tournament, 5 koreans qualified for NASL2 (2 of which also got into the main bracket of NASL1). So that makes a total of 11 koreans + select.
There are only 4 spots available from the NASL2 qualifier (they are only have 45 people next season I believe). The qualifier has already been played and all 4 were korean. That makes a total of 15 koreans + select. And I believe ensnare qualified for season 2 (ranked 33) but wasn't high enough to make the playoffs. So there should be a total of 16 + Select next season.
About what the admins want... I think they just want the best players and to put on the best tournament. I don't think they really care if there are a ton of koreans.
On July 07 2011 06:17 thepuppyassassin wrote: Geez another Korean in the grand finals. I didn't know that GSL changed venues.
So including the other Koreans in the top 8 of the open bracket, I'm counting about 14 Koreans who are definitely getting an invite to the next season. I'm also thinking more Koreans will get in via qualfiers.
Now i'm not sure how the qualifier works.. but if we simply go by the same stats as the open bracket (lets say another 5 get in). That's 19 Koreans in the next season out of 50 players in the group stages.
Correct me if I'm wrong.. but isn't this what the tournament admins NOT want? )something about it being a North American tournament and all that jazz).
NA means the games are played on the NA servers, that's it
Anyone willing to play on our servers can participate.
The point hes trying to make is, its a north american league and eventually the league is going to be dominated by mostly koreans.
It would be like the gsl being dominated by over 50% north americans, do you think thats something the gsl would want?
Your analogy doesn't work too well. The "NA" in NASL stands for North America. The "G" in GSL stands for "Global". Since the "G" in GSL stands for "Global" AND because America is a wealthy consumer nations that's great for advertisers and generating revenue... yes, I do think the GSL wants their league to be dominated by North Americans.
On July 10 2011 01:59 Bobster wrote: The bottom 4 seeds including the Open winner should be pooled, and the first 4 seeds should be able to choose their Ro16 opponents from that pool.
There, all problems solved.
Yeah but according to Xeris it wasn't a problem... People proposed a good amount of viable solution, and they still fucked up.
20 KR, 20 EU, 10 NA (+/- 1 for SEn) seems fair, NA is a lot weaker than KR and EU, so i dont have a problem with fewer NAs. But i can understand, that in the NASL should be a reasonable number of NA players
On July 07 2011 06:17 thepuppyassassin wrote: Geez another Korean in the grand finals. I didn't know that GSL changed venues.
So including the other Koreans in the top 8 of the open bracket, I'm counting about 14 Koreans who are definitely getting an invite to the next season. I'm also thinking more Koreans will get in via qualfiers.
Now i'm not sure how the qualifier works.. but if we simply go by the same stats as the open bracket (lets say another 5 get in). That's 19 Koreans in the next season out of 50 players in the group stages.
Correct me if I'm wrong.. but isn't this what the tournament admins NOT want? )something about it being a North American tournament and all that jazz).
NA means the games are played on the NA servers, that's it
Anyone willing to play on our servers can participate.
The point hes trying to make is, its a north american league and eventually the league is going to be dominated by mostly koreans.
It would be like the gsl being dominated by over 50% north americans, do you think thats something the gsl would want?
ideally people want to watch the best players possible.. premier league, serie a and la liga isnt exactly dominated by english, italian and spanish players
On July 10 2011 02:06 acrimoneyius wrote: Ret gets rewarded by facing arguably the strongest player in the tournament
Not as unlucky as having to face MC like boxer xD
What's funny is boxer had an advantage in game 2 and botched it with his decision to attack MC's third instead of clashing armies. Boxer is pretty strong, but small things hold him back.
On July 10 2011 02:08 Irrelevant wrote: Why does everyone care so much about race and nationality isn't the goal of esports to watch the best of the best playing?
Yes it is, but even in huge tournaments like March Madness, Top teams ranked #1 are put against the Weakest of the Top teams. That way they get rewarded for playing better than the other teams during the regular season. Sorting into the bracket makes or breaks certain teams.
This is why people were upset about the way NASL did it. They believed that Ret was playing a harder opponent becuase the Open Bracket Winner was likely better than many of the other people who qualified, and I agree with this.
On July 10 2011 02:08 Irrelevant wrote: Why does everyone care so much about race and nationality isn't the goal of esports to watch the best of the best playing?
Yes it is, but even in huge tournaments like March Madness, Top teams ranked #1 are put against the Weakest of the Top teams. That way they get rewarded for playing better than the other teams during the regular season. Sorting into the bracket makes or breaks certain teams.
This is why people were upset about the way NASL did it. They believed that Ret was playing a harder opponent becuase the Open Bracket Winner was likely better than many of the other people who qualified, and I agree with this.
I don't disagree with that.
However half the pages in this thread are full with "koreans shouldn't be allowed in a NORTH AMERICAN league, or only a very small amount!" Yet no one says anything about Euro players...
orrrrrrrrrrrr NA players can learn to not suck so much and if they wanna be a "pro" gamer then get better. Use the koreans dominating your own turf as motivation to get better cause I as a spectator and player want to see the best play in a tournament for 100,000 dollar prize pool and if ever given the chance i wanna play against the best.
You could have the top 8 seeds choose their opponents from the bottom 8 in descending order. Have to agree that there's an obvious problem with the way it panned out this season. It'll probably take a few seasons for the level of players in/outside the league to even out so that the open bracket player might possibly be the 16th seed skillwise.
On July 10 2011 02:19 FOUTWENTYSIXTY wrote: Because 6 of the last 8 are Korean. If 6 of the last 8 were European objections would be raised.
Also the fundamental problem is that it's mainly full time professionals versus semi-pros without equitable training enviroments.
It's uncompetitive and Ret getting hammered made a mockery of the group section of play.
some foreigners are just lazy.
Darkforce is one of the most hardworker progamer in Europe, tadam, results. If ret want to play 5/6h day, he couldn't expect good results when he'll face good opponents in good conditions (not cross server), and it's the same for a lot of foreigners.
The finals results speaks for itself now. There has to be a change next season.
I understand that Ret would have been in just as bad of a spot playing MC first instead, but my point of the open winner being really dangerous for the 1st seed is apparent. Huge disincentive to be 1st place which is bad for the tournament.
Since you performed so well this season and took down the #1 seed in NASL after 8 weeks of staying up late and playing amazing games you now get to play someone who won a quick tournament and is one of the best Korean Terrans.
On July 11 2011 09:13 WGarrison wrote: The finals results speaks for itself now. There has to be a change next season.
I understand that Ret would have been in just as bad of a spot playing MC first instead, but my point of the open winner being really dangerous for the 1st seed is apparent. Huge disincentive to be 1st place which is bad for the tournament.
2 suggestions id give for fixing this
1) Give a $$$ incentive for winning the league ( 5000$? and just make first 45k?)
or something like GSL group selections. #1 seed just picks who he wants to play, #2 the same, and in order until all 8 matchups are chosen. If #1 picks #2 so be it.
3) let ONLY #1 pick, and reseed the other 14 into bracket
I don't understand why they even get into the finals at all. I would rather have someone that had to commit to the league, instead of one guy that just plays an open bracket and gets a free spot in the finals. Yes, some people will say "herp derp the open bracket is hard tho!!!1!" and yeah I know that. Give them some cash or something for winning it. They are already guaranteed to play in the next season. Idk who the player was that was closest to being in the finals, but he should feel really screwed right now. The only thing the player that wins the open bracket had to put in was $10 and a few days time. Compare that to the players that have to pay a fee to be in the league, plus have to play through the whole nine weeks. I think it's ridiculous. Give them something, but not a spot in the finals.
On July 11 2011 09:13 WGarrison wrote: The finals results speaks for itself now. There has to be a change next season.
I understand that Ret would have been in just as bad of a spot playing MC first instead, but my point of the open winner being really dangerous for the 1st seed is apparent. Huge disincentive to be 1st place which is bad for the tournament.
2 suggestions id give for fixing this
1) Give a $$$ incentive for winning the league ( 5000$? and just make first 45k?)
or something like GSL group selections. #1 seed just picks who he wants to play, #2 the same, and in order until all 8 matchups are chosen. If #1 picks #2 so be it.
3) let ONLY #1 pick, and reseed the other 14 into bracket
All of these are pretty amazing. Although I also like the suggestion of group play in the last stages. It means more games which means harder to schedule but they could easily roll group play into day 1 and 2 and still show all games. This is of course based on a more loose schedule during group play.
On July 11 2011 09:21 MechKing wrote: I don't understand why they even get into the finals at all. I would rather have someone that had to commit to the league, instead of one guy that just plays an open bracket and gets a free spot in the finals. Yes, some people will say "herp derp the open bracket is hard tho!!!1!" and yeah I know that. Give them some cash or something for winning it. They are already guaranteed to play in the next season. Idk who the player was that was closest to being in the finals, but he should feel really screwed right now. The only thing the player that wins the open bracket had to put in was $10 and a few days time. Compare that to the players that have to pay a fee to be in the league, plus have to play through the whole nine weeks. I think it's ridiculous. Give them something, but not a spot in the finals.
This has been my issue with letting in the Open Bracket winner. I don't see how you should just allow someone to not put in the time and somehow be crowned the "champion" of the NASL.
I mean Ret put in 9+ weeks into it and Puma put in what, 6 days? Yet somehow Puma is the champion.
I'm not trying to discount Puma's skill or anything, but I can't really find any fairness in letting someone win a League in which they put in no time at all.
That's like letting the New England Patriots into the NFL playoffs without playing a single regular season game.
On July 11 2011 09:13 WGarrison wrote: The finals results speaks for itself now. There has to be a change next season.
I understand that Ret would have been in just as bad of a spot playing MC first instead, but my point of the open winner being really dangerous for the 1st seed is apparent. Huge disincentive to be 1st place which is bad for the tournament.
2 suggestions id give for fixing this
1) Give a $$$ incentive for winning the league ( 5000$? and just make first 45k?)
or something like GSL group selections. #1 seed just picks who he wants to play, #2 the same, and in order until all 8 matchups are chosen. If #1 picks #2 so be it.
3) let ONLY #1 pick, and reseed the other 14 into bracket
well, I guess also have all of them in the same room and make them "talk it out" like they do in GSL would/could generate "interesting" drama..
EPT
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