On August 17 2024 22:52 encyclopedia wrote: Though it is sad to see TIME get no extra reward for winning 12 games and playing through a total of 25, remember that $15K is basically enough to support a player for a whole year. For context, the combined first and second place for this last GSL was about $5K. Sure, Coffee gets the same reward, despite not deserving the same. Yet I seriously doubt people are playing this game for the money at this point. You are playing for the right to play even more challenging games, and TIME won his right to those games and showed his skills whereas Coffee did not earn the right to show many games. So in that sense the reward is good.
Remember, though this is $1M that nobody was guaranteed. Gratitude is the proper response.
Whoever wins (Dark?) is free to host a hundred grand tourney for everyone else and still walk out with $300K in prize money overall. Imagine then if the second place player hosted a $35K tourney and came out with still $115K in prize money, and then the third and fourth place players both hosted $20K tourneys and came out with $60K in prize money each. That would be a total of $175K in tourneys for the upcoming year at a modest 25% recycling rate. And assuming all the other players did similarly with a quarter of their winnings, we could get up to $250K in recycled tournament money and many smaller tourneys hosted by the players themselves.
Those who are familiar with the history of Joseph would be wise to think seriously about this in view of the years ahead.
I'm pretty sure Poland and Brazil are the only nations where 15k usd could last a year.
Wow i thought that they get seeded further into the KO bracket... guess not, i wonder why, cus i love the rest of the tournament format so far
It's really sad for Maru, herO, Oli to come so short and can get knocked out R1 of KO, and end up being placed 16th? Doesn't seem right.
However, it's admirable to give everyone (or almost everyone) in KO bracket a fair equal chance at making it out, whereas if it was seeded then it would be biased towards certain people. (Which ofc would be justified though since they got further in the Group stages).
What they should've done is depending your performance on the group stage, you'll drop into different rounds of the knockout bracket. So, someone who went 0-2 goes into the first round, and someone who went 2-2 goes into a latter round. This in effect would make it less matches in the knockout phase - and then make the knockout bo5 - if your tournament is on the line, I think it should be a proper series.
I was praising this format yesterday because losers still got 2x comeback potential but didn't realize knockouts use bo3 until finals? Welp, that's dogshit and bo3 needs to be erased from existence.
The format kinda makes sense if you think about it—most of the 'real' bracket was already played during the double elim of Group A/B, while the knockout/last chance bracket is more of a 'bonus.' However, the fact that basically every tournament in the world has chronologically escalating stakes make it extremely unintuitive to think about it that way.
That's been a constant failure for ESL in recent years. They don't realize the casual fan WON'T think about formats deeply, so you have to present them with intuitive, easy to understand formats. I like SOME of the added complexity in recent formats—the winners bracket/stage in EPT season finals has really upped the game quality on day 1 of events (instead of initially slogging through several series of rank #40 player vs rank #20 player in the open bracket). But this EWC format really is a step too far.
On August 18 2024 01:14 outscar wrote: I was praising this format yesterday because losers still got 2x comeback potential but didn't realize knockouts use bo3 until finals? Welp, that's dogshit and bo3 needs to be erased from existence.
bo3 would generally be fine but the current map pool is about the worst it's been since WoL days statistically. (seriously multiple 35-40% matchups is wild)
On August 18 2024 02:02 Waxangel wrote: The format kinda makes sense if you think about it—most of the 'real' bracket was already played during the double elim of Group A/B, while the knockout/last chance bracket is more of a 'bonus.' However, the fact that basically every tournament in the world has chronologically escalating stakes make it extremely unintuitive to think about it that way.
In this instance a little semantics would have gone a long way. If it was just called the 'last chance' bracket people would be a lot less up in arms.
Yeah a last chance bracket concept is nice, maybe they could have made a player's rank/prize money based off of their Group stage result, the last chance is just an extra bonus in case you make it to the Top 4.
Potentially getting like 5th/6th after Group stage, then getting knocked out first round of the last chance bracket and being placed 16th, just feels brutal and wrong
It would have been better with Bo5s of course, but I totally understand they don't have the time. But if no time then this isn't the ideal.
On August 18 2024 02:02 Waxangel wrote: The format kinda makes sense if you think about it—most of the 'real' bracket was already played during the double elim of Group A/B, while the knockout/last chance bracket is more of a 'bonus.' However, the fact that basically every tournament in the world has chronologically escalating stakes make it extremely unintuitive to think about it that way.
The problem is that the prize pool and placement don't reflect the hype of the real vs bonus bracket. You can be winning 3 bo5's and be 1 win away from going to the top 4 and still have your placement and prize winning reset down to 18th place and $15,000 the same as someone who went 0-6 in the group stage.
And you end up in a situation where someone who only won a single bo3 2-1 the entire tournament (Classic) places higher and won more money than someone who's won 3 bo5's (Oli).
On August 18 2024 02:02 Waxangel wrote: The format kinda makes sense if you think about it—most of the 'real' bracket was already played during the double elim of Group A/B, while the knockout/last chance bracket is more of a 'bonus.' However, the fact that basically every tournament in the world has chronologically escalating stakes make it extremely unintuitive to think about it that way.
The problem is that the prize pool and placement don't reflect the hype of the real vs bonus bracket. You can be winning 3 bo5's and be 1 win away from going to the top 4 and still have your placement and prize winning reset down to 18th place and $15,000 the same as someone who went 0-6 in the group stage.
And you end up in a situation where someone who only won a single bo3 2-1 the entire tournament (Classic) places higher and won more money than someone who's won 3 bo5's (Oli).
Yes, the two major flaws besides the inherent complexity are 1) it being a very poor ranking/prize distribution system, and 2) having a relatively low stakes portion of the tournament on the penultimate day.
On August 18 2024 02:02 Waxangel wrote: The format kinda makes sense if you think about it—most of the 'real' bracket was already played during the double elim of Group A/B, while the knockout/last chance bracket is more of a 'bonus.' However, the fact that basically every tournament in the world has chronologically escalating stakes make it extremely unintuitive to think about it that way.
The problem is that the prize pool and placement don't reflect the hype of the real vs bonus bracket. You can be winning 3 bo5's and be 1 win away from going to the top 4 and still have your placement and prize winning reset down to 18th place and $15,000 the same as someone who went 0-6 in the group stage.
And you end up in a situation where someone who only won a single bo3 2-1 the entire tournament (Classic) places higher and won more money than someone who's won 3 bo5's (Oli).
Yes, the two major flaws besides the inherent complexity are 1) it being a very poor ranking/prize distribution system, and 2) having a relatively low stakes portion of the tournament on the penultimate day.
Well only the first thing you mentioned. The very poor ranking system (not prize distribution - that itself is great) means that every single bo3 was extremely high stakes at every time.
True, if herO goes on to win the entire thing, he would have to play 11 series. Versus Dark/Clem, if they win, they will only have to play 5 series. Pretty intense.
I think it is very unfair to put ppl with 3 wins on the same bracket row as people who literally only lost. My guess is the organizers wanted to get the most amount of games played, and tbh they are paying an absurd amount of money for a not super popular games tournament, so I can understand.
Absolutely terrible format, too complicated, so many cool matches but with way less stakes that it would have been if it were single elimination bracket like in katowice because so many more second chances and like people have said previously it favors the favorites, less posibilities of upset wins, preditable, less interesting
so far the tournament is saved by the quality of the games which is really great but the format is terrible
On August 18 2024 04:15 Solio wrote: Absolutely terrible format, too complicated, so many cool matches but with way less stakes that it would have been if it were single elimination bracket like in katowice because so many more second chances and like people have said previously it favors the favorites, less posibilities of upset wins, preditable, less interesting
so far the tournament is saved by the quality of the games which is really great but the format is terrible
group play into double elim or straight up double elim from the start
On August 18 2024 02:02 Waxangel wrote: The format kinda makes sense if you think about it—most of the 'real' bracket was already played during the double elim of Group A/B, while the knockout/last chance bracket is more of a 'bonus.' However, the fact that basically every tournament in the world has chronologically escalating stakes make it extremely unintuitive to think about it that way.
The problem is that the prize pool and placement don't reflect the hype of the real vs bonus bracket. You can be winning 3 bo5's and be 1 win away from going to the top 4 and still have your placement and prize winning reset down to 18th place and $15,000 the same as someone who went 0-6 in the group stage.
And you end up in a situation where someone who only won a single bo3 2-1 the entire tournament (Classic) places higher and won more money than someone who's won 3 bo5's (Oli).
Yes, the two major flaws besides the inherent complexity are 1) it being a very poor ranking/prize distribution system, and 2) having a relatively low stakes portion of the tournament on the penultimate day.
Well only the first thing you mentioned. The very poor ranking system (not prize distribution - that itself is great) means that every single bo3 was extremely high stakes at every time.
I mean consequential in the sense of deciding who actually plays for the championship—knockout day is relatively low stakes because it only decides one semifinalist, compared to 3 semifinalists decided in the earlier 3 days. It's as if they frontloaded three of the 'quarterfinal' matches in the first three days, which is extremely unintuitive to fans in any sport/esport (they're trained to tune in on the weekend for the most consequential matches).
The format isn't that bad if you don't perceive the linear passage of time
EPT
