EPTIf the final round of the tournament could be played in a bubble format, where the results of the group stage determine the position of the players, I would think this format is better
Is the EWC format unreasonable?
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serralbest
38 Posts
If the final round of the tournament could be played in a bubble format, where the results of the group stage determine the position of the players, I would think this format is better | ||
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ShowTheLights
Korea (South)1669 Posts
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kajtarp
Hungary457 Posts
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Zaros
United Kingdom3692 Posts
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Devangel
Russian Federation62 Posts
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DisReSpeCTsc2
United States44 Posts
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Mizenhauer
United States1799 Posts
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Agh
United States896 Posts
The only real crazy statistic is that herO will have had to play 11 series total if he goes on to win. | ||
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CicadaSC
United States1337 Posts
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angryground
54 Posts
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Nakajin
Canada8988 Posts
 Talk about missing your moment... In short, no the format is not reasonable, for three reasons. 1. Way too complicated. There's nothing remotely intuitive in the format, you basically cannot decipher who will play who next without Liquipedia. It just creates confusion all around and reduces excitement. 2. The format works to reduce the stakes. Many matches have little or no bearing on the unfolding of the tournament (most of the group matches), and players who have already lost multiple matches are still in the running for the trophy, which begs the question of why viewers were supposed to get invested in those matches in the first place. Losing a match should mean an elimination from the tournament in most cases, and if not at least a major setback in your chance to get the trophy. That's how you create drama and memorable matches, no one will remember group stage matches in a couple of days because they were mostly meaningless. 3. In relation with the second point, the format is skewed to favor the favorites and create the most predictable end results. By giving players second and third chances, you erase statistical anomalies and allow the best players to dodge their bad matchups. For example, if we had a more cutthroat tournament format, we could have the overwhelming favorite (Serral) out as he's drawn a bad matchup in Clem, same for Maru. It would have been an exciting, controversial and most of all memorable turn of events. Instead, they are both still there, with Serral just a match away from the grand final. Meanwhile, underdogs get close to nothing for their good work. Astrea put on a great pvt performance to pull off the upset against Gumiho, but the tournament format is set up to negate his win. There was essentially no chance Astrea was ever pulling 3 major upsets in a row, meaning he fell to the knockout stage all the same, and to make things worse he didn't even get to parade the pelt of Gumiho, seeing as the terran was still in the lower bracket. Now he's out of the tournament and got the same prize money as if he had gone 0-3. There's other stuff I'd like to touch on, but TLDR, a world championship format should look as close to this as possible: + Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](https://bnetcmsus-a.akamaihd.net/cms/content_folder_media/N1VVK1MT6KOR1383849557438.jpg) (ps; I'm aware I've somewhat deviated from the OP question. Regarding it, it is kind of dumb that there's no knockout bracket seeding in relation to group stage performance, but I do prefer it as it at least creates a little bit of chance of a surprising and meaningful upset. However, the solution IMO was just to not have a group stage.) | ||
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Balnazza
Germany1070 Posts
But as I said, without staggering according to the results of the first round, the first round became useless for anyone except three players (Maru skipped one Bo3, woohoo...), which is silly. Considering that the format was Bo5 before, it creates strategy-problems aswell: Do players fire through their arsenal in Round 1? Or do players like Classic or Coffee keep their strategies hidden, since it is more important to get deep into the Knockout Bracket? I would love to hear the reasoning for this format, because at EWC in general, we don't see particularly crazy formats all around...though there is definetly a theme that they try to have as many different formats as possible. Or maybe they didn't know how to fill all five days with games, considering that SC2 games are generally quicker compared to CS2 or LoL games, but they needed to fill the schedule nevertheless? | ||
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mintyminmus
Australia127 Posts
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Mizenhauer
United States1799 Posts
On August 17 2024 20:51 Nakajin wrote: My mushy principles mean I'm reduced to following ESWC only through the TL thread, but I am a bit disappointed in myself that I have a 90% done article about tournament formats sleeping on my computer for two months Talk about missing your moment... In short, no the format is not reasonable, for three reasons. 1. Way too complicated. There's nothing remotely intuitive in the format, you basically cannot decipher who will play who next without Liquipedia. It just creates confusion all around and reduces excitement. 2. The format works to reduce the stakes. Many matches have little or no bearing on the unfolding of the tournament (most of the group matches), and players who have already lost multiple matches are still in the running for the trophy, which begs the question of why viewers were supposed to get invested in those matches in the first place. Losing a match should mean an elimination from the tournament in most cases, and if not at least a major setback in your chance to get the trophy. That's how you create drama and memorable matches, no one will remember group stage matches in a couple of days because they were mostly meaningless. 3. In relation with the second point, the format is skewed to favor the favorites and create the most predictable end results. By giving players second and third chances, you erase statistical anomalies and allow the best players to dodge their bad matchups. For example, if we had a more cutthroat tournament format, we could have the overwhelming favorite (Serral) out as he's drawn a bad matchup in Clem, same for Maru. It would have been an exciting, controversial and most of all memorable turn of events. Instead, they are both still there, with Serral just a match away from the grand final. Meanwhile, underdogs get close to nothing for their good work. Astrea put on a great pvt performance to pull off the upset against Gumiho, but the tournament format is set up to negate his win. There was essentially no chance Astrea was ever pulling 3 major upsets in a row, meaning he fell to the knockout stage all the same, and to make things worse he didn't even get to parade the pelt of Gumiho, seeing as the terran was still in the lower bracket. Now he's out of the tournament and got the same prize money as if he had gone 0-3. There's other stuff I'd like to touch on, but TLDR, a world championship format should look as close to this as possible: + Show Spoiler + (ps; I'm aware I've somewhat deviated from the OP question. Regarding it, it is kind of dumb that there's no knockout bracket seeding in relation to group stage performance, but I do prefer it as it at least creates a little bit of chance of a surprising and meaningful upset. However, the solution IMO was just to not have a group stage.) Who would have thought that a bracket is the best way to format 1v1 competition after decades of use in popular sports. | ||
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M3t4PhYzX
Poland4128 Posts
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Nakajin
Canada8988 Posts
On August 17 2024 21:55 Mizenhauer wrote: Who would have thought that a bracket is the best way to format 1v1 competition after decades of use in popular sports. Not SC2 organizers apparently. Just in the 23-24 season, there have been 9 different formats for premier tournaments, and only a single tournament used a simple bracket Everyone wants to reinvent the wheel. | ||
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Brutaxilos
United States2622 Posts
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encyclopedia
3 Posts
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Mizenhauer
United States1799 Posts
On August 17 2024 22:17 Nakajin wrote: Not SC2 organizers apparently. Just in the 23-24 season, there have been 9 different formats for premier tournaments, and only a single tournament used a simple bracket Everyone wants to reinvent the wheel. A note worth adding. As a fan of college wrestling (aka I'm very used to their format for tournaments), I appreciate that, should you lose in the winner's bracket, that the highest you can place is third (by winning the losers bracket). Instead, first and second place are determined solely on advancing through the winner's bracket). I find it extremely problematic once you try to devise a system where the loser's bracket gives you a way to make it back to the finals because you have to differentiate the winner of the winner's bracket vs the loser's finals winner since the upper bracket player is undefeated. And, that's probably the easiest problem to solve. | ||
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encyclopedia
3 Posts
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Mizenhauer
United States1799 Posts
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. | ||
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encyclopedia
3 Posts
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10292 Posts
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). | ||
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Azzur
Australia6254 Posts
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outscar
2831 Posts
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Waxangel
United States33109 Posts
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. | ||
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MJG
United Kingdom792 Posts
Different for the sake of being different. | ||
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Agh
United States896 Posts
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. | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10292 Posts
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. | ||
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argonautdice
Canada2704 Posts
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). | ||
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Waxangel
United States33109 Posts
On August 18 2024 02:34 argonautdice wrote: 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. | ||
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Pandain
United States12985 Posts
On August 18 2024 02:50 Waxangel wrote: 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. | ||
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johnnyh123
85 Posts
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Fubika24
37 Posts
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. | ||
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Zaros
United Kingdom3692 Posts
IEM Katowice is such a better format | ||
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Blitzball04
136 Posts
The knockout stage only benefits everyone that would have already eliminated in the classic winner/loser bracket format. Without this format, we wouldn’t have been able to see the Protoss hope in the final 4. Group stages are the worst and most boring format. For example the GSL format. Best format however, would be a system like the NCAA with a winner bracket and loser bracket | ||
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MrIronGolem27
United States191 Posts
On August 18 2024 04:07 Blitzball04 wrote: Love this format, more sc2 and something fresh The knockout stage only benefits everyone that would have already eliminated in the classic winner/loser bracket format. Tell that to Oliveira. | ||
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Solio
France145 Posts
so far the tournament is saved by the quality of the games which is really great but the format is terrible | ||
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M3t4PhYzX
Poland4128 Posts
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 nothing ever beat that, nothing ever will | ||
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Waxangel
United States33109 Posts
On August 18 2024 03:20 Pandain wrote: 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  | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland24036 Posts
You spend 2 days, good Bo5 matches to determine 3/4 Ro4 placements but almost nothing else. And everyone has a second shot Then a Bo3 gauntlet to determine all other placement? With two players who only come in at that stage? My issue is dual, I think it has both competitive fairness issues but also viewer investment issues as well. In a regular tournament format, sure it’s likely a Serral is a lock for the top 4 usually. But there’s still a lot of interest in who’s placing where, or an upset can happen. Having a mini-tournament essentially for the Ro4 first, with no graduating rewards and extra lives? One, a Serral may not be in good enough shape to win, but he’s almost certain to push for that Ro4 slot. Two there’s so little reward for performing well but falling short, that the stakes in other matches become basically meaningless. There’s no ‘oh this is a sick run, I didn’t expect this guy to beat Serral, and he didn’t but hey they made the Ro8’ facet to it. Compounding this you have the ‘extra lives’ problem be at its most uneven I’ve yet seen. SHINTime have one shot. Dark and Clem also have one shot, punished by their excellence as it were. The rest of the field have 3! I wouldn’t even mind a brutal knockout gauntlet quite so much but they flipped to Bo3 for it? It’s like they picked the worst aspects of each format and mashed them together. Round robins are good for rewarding consistently good players, but they can lack a bit of jeopardy at times. You can get dead rubbers that are meaningless in effect too. Single elim is exciting, but brutal and you can find with a few upsets the knockouts suffer with maybe better players eliminated. These are judgements to try and balance, but this format? You seemingly mash together the relative predicability of a round robin stage, with the unforgiving but exciting world of a single elim bracket. But at different stages, which is odd Not that I’d rant about this format or anything… | ||
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Balnazza
Germany1070 Posts
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Nakajin
Canada8988 Posts
On August 18 2024 04:44 WombaT wrote: Terrible format, argh. You spend 2 days, good Bo5 matches to determine 3/4 Ro4 placements but almost nothing else. And everyone has a second shot Then a Bo3 gauntlet to determine all other placement? With two players who only come in at that stage? My issue is dual, I think it has both competitive fairness issues but also viewer investment issues as well. In a regular tournament format, sure it’s likely a Serral is a lock for the top 4 usually. But there’s still a lot of interest in who’s placing where, or an upset can happen. Having a mini-tournament essentially for the Ro4 first, with no graduating rewards and extra lives? One, a Serral may not be in good enough shape to win, but he’s almost certain to push for that Ro4 slot. Two there’s so little reward for performing well but falling short, that the stakes in other matches become basically meaningless. There’s no ‘oh this is a sick run, I didn’t expect this guy to beat Serral, and he didn’t but hey they made the Ro8’ facet to it. Compounding this you have the ‘extra lives’ problem be at its most uneven I’ve yet seen. SHINTime have one shot. Dark and Clem also have one shot, punished by their excellence as it were. The rest of the field have 3! I wouldn’t even mind a brutal knockout gauntlet quite so much but they flipped to Bo3 for it? It’s like they picked the worst aspects of each format and mashed them together. Round robins are good for rewarding consistently good players, but they can lack a bit of jeopardy at times. You can get dead rubbers that are meaningless in effect too. Single elim is exciting, but brutal and you can find with a few upsets the knockouts suffer with maybe better players eliminated. These are judgements to try and balance, but this format? You seemingly mash together the relative predicability of a round robin stage, with the unforgiving but exciting world of a single elim bracket. But at different stages, which is odd Not that I’d rant about this format or anything… Pretty much how I feel, great post. | ||
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Locutos
Brazil259 Posts
If herO got to the Finals, he would begin 0 - 2 against Dark, and 1 - 2 against Serral, for example. Making it through the winners bracket would reward one nicely at the end, while still keeping the torch alight for the underdog from losers bracket. | ||
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Balnazza
Germany1070 Posts
On August 18 2024 06:08 Locutos wrote: I think this format would be a bit more fair, if the Finals were bo9, and the number of match losses through the tournament counted as map loss. If herO got to the Finals, he would begin 0 - 2 against Dark, and 1 - 2 against Serral, for example. Making it through the winners bracket would reward one nicely at the end. It's the biggest tournament of all time and one player could potentially start with a 2-map-advantage against another player who he never even was in the same bracket with? Doesn't feel right... The finals are Bo9 btw | ||
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Locutos
Brazil259 Posts
On August 18 2024 06:11 Balnazza wrote: It's the biggest tournament of all time and one player could potentially start with a 2-map-advantage against another player who he never even was in the same bracket with? Doesn't feel right... The finals are Bo9 btw Only if one got there losing to absolutely no one, and the other having two losses at the tournament. If the campaing in said tournament shouldnt matter, then why not go for a simple direct bracket? I think that the complex way i proposed gives a chance for complex story lines, while mantaining a fairness to it. | ||
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Locutos
Brazil259 Posts
On August 18 2024 06:11 Balnazza wrote: It's the biggest tournament of all time and one player could potentially start with a 2-map-advantage against another player who he never even was in the same bracket with? Doesn't feel right... The finals are Bo9 btw A way to dilute that advantage could be that the one who starts behind chooses the maps that would count as losses? | ||
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Acrofales
Spain17859 Posts
On August 17 2024 22:36 Mizenhauer wrote: A note worth adding. As a fan of college wrestling (aka I'm very used to their format for tournaments), I appreciate that, should you lose in the winner's bracket, that the highest you can place is third (by winning the losers bracket). Instead, first and second place are determined solely on advancing through the winner's bracket). I find it extremely problematic once you try to devise a system where the loser's bracket gives you a way to make it back to the finals because you have to differentiate the winner of the winner's bracket vs the loser's finals winner since the upper bracket player is undefeated. And, that's probably the easiest problem to solve. Honestly, having to play 2 extra extremely high stakes matches is plenty. Other tournaments have tried rewarding the upper bracket winner and it generally just felt unfair. Making it to the Ro4 and having your lives "reset" feels fine. Same way yellow cards get forgiven in the semis in the Euros/World Cup. It's the rest of the bracket that's trash. Should just' ve ben proper seeding into a staggered knockout bracket, with Bo5s. Sure, we probably wouldn't have had the drama of Maru getting knocked out, but we also would have avoided the heartbreak of Oliveira getting the lowest reward, same as coffee. And then find a better way of seeding SHINtime into there so they get to play more than a single Bo3. | ||
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kajtarp
Hungary457 Posts
On August 18 2024 08:02 Acrofales wrote: Honestly, having to play 2 extra extremely high stakes matches is plenty. Other tournaments have tried rewarding the upper bracket winner and it generally just felt unfair. Making it to the Ro4 and having your lives "reset" feels fine. Same way yellow cards get forgiven in the semis in the Euros/World Cup. It's the rest of the bracket that's trash. Should just' ve ben proper seeding into a staggered knockout bracket, with Bo5s. Sure, we probably wouldn't have had the drama of Maru getting knocked out, but we also would have avoided the heartbreak of Oliveira getting the lowest reward, same as coffee. And then find a better way of seeding SHINtime into there so they get to play more than a single Bo3. No this format is not fine. Imagine if herO beats Clem. Clem is out, herO in finals. After herO is on his 3rd "life" and Clem was undefeated this far. I'm not saying against herO, because i absolutely love the guy and he played phenomenal today. But giving 2nd and 3rd life to someone while others doesn't even get 2nd life is just not fair. Group phase+single elim is still the best format. | ||
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Acrofales
Spain17859 Posts
On August 18 2024 08:17 kajtarp wrote: No this format is not fine. Imagine if herO beats Clem. Clem is out, herO in finals. After herO is on his 3rd "life" and Clem was undefeated this far. I'm not saying against herO, because i absolutely love the guy and he played phenomenal today. But giving 2nd and 3rd life to someone while others doesn't even get 2nd life is just not fair. Group phase+single elim is still the best format. Eh, Clem would've had two days of downtime to practice and not show his builds, while herO had 2 days of extremely tense, nervous, high stakes battles and showing all his best PvT builds against Cure (and to a lesser extent Gumiho and Spirit). That's enough advantage to Clem. | ||
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Balnazza
Germany1070 Posts
On August 18 2024 08:17 kajtarp wrote: No this format is not fine. Imagine if herO beats Clem. Clem is out, herO in finals. After herO is on his 3rd "life" and Clem was undefeated this far. I'm not saying against herO, because i absolutely love the guy and he played phenomenal today. But giving 2nd and 3rd life to someone while others doesn't even get 2nd life is just not fair. Group phase+single elim is still the best format. So GSL was never fair? That's an interesting thesis almost 15 years deep into SC2s history... | ||
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Faraday1218
1 Post
It is acceptable that the high-level players can compete before the main game to take a leap straight to the final stage. However, the games played prior to the main game should be less valued even just in terms of format. When it comes to EWC, it turns out to be: the prior competition has 16 players with the double emilination and bo5 but the main competition which determines the ranking of the players has 16 players with single emilination and bo3? It seems like the compitition is just held for the Final Four and disregards all the other 14 players even if there may be only one match distinction between them. I think that's where the problem lies. | ||
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johnnyh123
85 Posts
Preparation based games brings out the best of the best, and with a lot of mind game and strategy. Whereas weekenders bring mechanics and thinking on the spot. I would have loved if they were able to bring both into the tournament. Have the beginning stage being more 2) preparation based. Then knockout stage being more 1) chaotic 1 day marathon. Not sure how it would work logistically, but that would be cool. | ||
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sc2turtlepants
27 Posts
Almost everyone here seem to be judging the format based on how they imagine they'd perceive it if they were competing. I don't think the competitors were the primary targets of the format - the viewership was. I haven't seen a match that didn't feel like life or death. The Groupstage days felt that way because the Knockout Bracket looked impossible, and the KB did because it was actually bo3 sudden death. Now we're going to get the semis tomorrow with the 4 people who actually performed the best - no one missed out because they got a shit draw against Serral in the Round of 16 or whatever. Do you know how rare that is? Everyone in the semis earned the hell out of it because of how they played each day this week, and all of the many, many matches played were intense for both the viewers and the players. I've NEVER seen so many players get so emotional at every loss and win before. Not at GSL or WCS, not at Kato, and even not at the ultimate pinnacle of competitive Starcraft, the premiere of premieres known only as 'Zombiegrub's Safehouse'. I'm not saying the bracket is perfect. It has flaws and it's rough on the 'close-but-not-quite' players. But there are several things this format does extremely well and I think those should be acknowledged too! On August 17 2024 20:51 Nakajin wrote: My mushy principles mean I'm reduced to following ESWC only through the TL thread I read this as, "I have no earthly idea what I'm talking about, but here's my opinion anyway..." You'd have to watch the tournament as it plays out to have any idea why it's structured the way it is. | ||
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Devin1
14 Posts
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Azzur
Australia6254 Posts
Another tweak (but not as important) I would also potentially look at placing the qualifiers (Shin/Showtime) into the losers round of the group matches rather than just the knockout. In the end, I think the format delivered as the best players qualified - I think the only player who could feel hard done was Olivera, but then don't forget, he benefited from the format in his Katowice win - people tend to forget he was 2-3 in the group and could've got eliminated but for a lucky result in another match. So there's pro/cons with every format. | ||
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Blargh
United States2101 Posts
The bigger problem is that there are too many pointless games and then when there were games that mattered, they were Bo3. I swear no one put any time into thinking why a bracket is laid out the way it is, with the number of games they have. Then there's that random 2nd of 2nd dropdown seed at the top of the knockout bracket, making it asymmetrical. Just the silliest shit imaginable. I personally find the quasi-Swiss format leading to a smaller knockout bracket to be the most satisfying, because it quickly filters out players in tiers while giving each player at least 3 games each. I find that plain round robin groups lead to too many pointless matches for one of the opponents, which should simply never happen. Also, the prize pool should be flatter. It's great they give $15k to the lowest player, but for a lot of these players, this prize money will end up being a large part of their salary for the following year. We don't need to keep rewarding the top 5 players with all the prize money. It does not benefit the scene any. | ||
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EhmiizSC
Sweden2 Posts
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Argonauta
Spain4902 Posts
Tournaments nowadays have many second or more (as in this case) lives to ensure the heavy favorites reach the final stages consistently. I would prefer to stay away from it honestly, more variance to the top8 would help the scene. | ||
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rwala
270 Posts
Beyond that I think it's reasonable enough. Or to put it another way, it's not in my view more unreasonable than other formats that have brutal group stages (GSL), bracket seeding anomalies/fairness issues (single elimination tournament brackets like GSL, IEM, etc.), or swiss/round robin formats in which the winner is often known before the last round (I don't think I've seen one of these in SCII since some of the early GSL qualifiers). | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland24036 Posts
On August 20 2024 15:51 Argonauta wrote: the 2nd vs 2nd for a final 4 spot was very weird. Tournaments nowadays have many second or more (as in this case) lives to ensure the heavy favorites reach the final stages consistently. I would prefer to stay away from it honestly, more variance to the top8 would help the scene. Maybe it’s just a numbers thing, if people tune out if big favourites drop, well perhaps they gotta make some moolah. Personally, I think you have a handful of clear ‘S’ class players, giving them effectively 3 lives is a bit much. Sure, maybe we wanted an epic Serral Maru final, but Rag brought his A game, Oliveira was on fire. You probably don’t get some of those fun stories that Katowice if you’re going effectively triple elim I think it’s a little backwards in that we used to have more cutthroat formats when you had a whole slew of players who could potentially win a tournament, now we’ve safer ones with fewer realistic winners. Or maybe I’m talking nonsense | ||
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