Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Quote from: Alex_Olijar on September 03, 2012, 05:09:35 PM

So top cut is elitist but ranking players and establishing pools of players based on ranking is not elitist?

Basically, yes.  Telling people they're not good enough to even compete for anywhere in the top 8/16/32 is elitist.  Telling people that they haven't proved themselves yet to put themselves on a list, but then letting them play their way to the finish of a tournament is NOT elitist.  Sure maybe they'll be a bit insulted that they aren't on the list, but as long as they perform well in their grouping, then they'll come out of the grouping near the top of the standings and have a chance to win the whole tournament.  I don't think people would be nearly as upset by that as they would if they took some early losses to tough opponents, but felt like they could've come back to finish in the top 10 if given the chance.  But they weren't even given the chance because they didn't make that top cut.

I can't believe you would honestly prefer to judge people prior to the tournament based on perceptions rather than judge them based on objective record during the tournament against other people playing in the tournament. So what if a good player loses to a good player during the swiss portion and doesn't qualify for the top cut? If that player deserved to be in the top cut based on their performance that particular day, they would make it.

Mark, you talk about strength of schedule a fair bit. Let's use the totals I calculated above to make some observations. Of those players with less than 5 games against the top 20, only 1 out of 11 had 12 points at the end of Round 5 - which meant only one person was in the realm of serious contention at the time. The remaining ten players were hanging out around the cut mark of a top cut after round 6 (being that each had at least 2 losses [excluding the one player with a timeout win and three full wins at the time, who would have had an inside track to be top cut in]). By top cutting, we would have avoided some of the strange results you see above (for example, John Earley would have been in serious issue of being cut if he didn't perform after going 3-2 his first five rounds).

The reality of the situation is that if you were to top cut immediately following the round which produces the last undefeated player, the tournament resolves significantly more fairly, as the winner will either be a) undefeated or b) have defeated at least 4 players of high standing in the tournament consecutively or c) both.

It forces the top players to have played at least 2 of the other top 4 placers during the tournament. What's more fair than guaranteeing that the top players in the tournament have played?

Also, as a side note, if we had top cut at 16 following Greeson's status as lone undefeated after Round 6, six new players would have made the top cut in comparison to the actual top 16 players following round 10. The lowest placed eventual top 10 players following round 6 was James Courtney in 30th.

The problem I see is the 4 4-1's at the end. How do you possibly resolve those without adding at least 3 more rounds?

Quote from: Alex_Olijar on September 03, 2012, 05:09:35 PM

So top cut is elitist but ranking players and establishing pools of players based on ranking is not elitist?

Basically, yes.  Telling people they're not good enough to even compete for anywhere in the top 8/16/32 is elitist.  Telling people that they haven't proved themselves yet to put themselves on a list, but then letting them play their way to the finish of a tournament is NOT elitist.

At the point we are discussing (6 or 7 rounds) before making the top cut, you are already past the required number of rounds based on teh number of players. If making a cut based on performance at this stage is elitist than every single tournament in the game that doesn't go three rounds beyond the minimum is elitist.

The problem I see is the 4 4-1's at the end. How do you possibly resolve those without adding at least 3 more rounds?

I think you meant two rounds.  2x (4-1 vs 4-1)  leaves 2x 5-1, who meet.

Also, Westy, I don't think anyone was talking about double elimination were they?  I thought they were talking about best-two-out-of-three single elimination.

Quote from: Master KChief on September 03, 2012, 10:39:00 PM

The problem I see is the 4 4-1's at the end. How do you possibly resolve those without adding at least 3 more rounds?

There are several options.

First, take into account the swiss rounds. Second, head-to-head. Lost Soul Diff, etc.

Right, I just thought we were trying to implement a system that handled tie-breakers better than resorting to h2h and lsd. For a system that was supposed to solve that problem, we have created 4 more at the end. :/

Also, Westy, I don't think anyone was talking about double elimination were they?  I thought they were talking about best-two-out-of-three single elimination.

It just dawned on me how incredibly awesome best 2 of 3 would be. HELLO SIDEDECK!

Does anyone really think that John Earley is NOT one of the top 16 players at Nats this past summer in T1-2p?

Yes.

Just kidding John. Love you brother.



Carry on. I have no real preference. If T2-2P ever gets big enough to need Top Cut, then I suppose I'll care. But as it is, I think it would be cool for hosts to have the option of using Top Cut, just like they have the option of adding rounds, but I don't think that it should necessarily be required for anything below Nationals, and at Nationals it would be up to Rob.

I'd refrained from posting on this for a while since I wasn't quite sure how to say what I wanted too. But i'm a little tired of people tossing my name around as an argument for or against topcut. I probably am one of the best players, top ten certainly, but I didn't deserve to take second at nationals. I played really awful. You can't look at topcut in the context of who we know to be the best players, you have to look at it in the context of most consistent results

Quote from: Alex_Olijar on September 03, 2012, 09:23:54 PM

So what if a good player loses to a good player during the swiss portion and doesn't qualify for the top cut?

The problem there is that this defeats the whole purpose of top-cut.  If the goal is to make the best players play each other the most games to get a clear winner, then having a top-cut ends up messing that up when some of the players in top-cut get there due to an easy early schedule.

The goal of the top cut is to ensure that the top placers played other top players by pairing them together in a knockout stage bracket. Do some players get to a top cut with an easier schedule than others? Sure, that's the nature of random matches. However, after that easy schedule, they must prove themselves against other top performing players and see if they just got an easy in or if they are legit.

Quote from: Alex_Olijar on September 03, 2012, 09:23:54 PM

By top cutting, we would have avoided some of the strange results you see above (for example, John Earley would have been in serious issue of being cut if he didn't perform after going 3-2 his first five rounds).

This is exactly what I'm talking about.  Does anyone really think that John Earley is NOT one of the top 16 players at Nats this past summer in T1-2p?  So if he doesn't even make the top-cut due to a really tough early schedule, then that shortchanges both him and the top-cut system as a whole.

As Nesfeder pointed out, the goal of top cut is not to put those considered traditionally good (Gabe, RDT, yourself, or I for example) into the top cut. It's to put those who prove themselves in the tournament into the top cut and force them to gut it out against each other. Will a lot of those good players be making the top cut? Yes. But isn't that why they are considered good players?

Quote from: Alex_Olijar on September 03, 2012, 09:23:54 PM

The reality of the situation is that if you were to top cut ...the winner will ...have defeated at least 4 players of high standing

Not if a large number of the players in the top cut got their from an easy early schedule.  This would still create unfair games within the top-cut itself as some players get much easier opponents than others.

Unless everyone plays the same schedule, you will always be not equal. Top cut minimizes this by establishing clear head to head victory chains for the winner to justify being the best, and avoids weird tiebreakers (due to always having head to head among those top cut).

Quote from: Alex_Olijar on September 03, 2012, 09:23:54 PM

Also, as a side note, if we had top cut at 16 following Greeson's status as lone undefeated after Round 6, six new players would have made the top cut in comparison to the actual top 16 players following round 10.

This is another reason why top-cut doesn't work.  Based on a free swiss system, it became evident after enough rounds that those 6 players really didn't belong in the top 16.  Yet if a hard top-cut had been used, then the 6 players who earned their way into the top 16 would've been locked out of those positions.

The problem with this argument is that given an infinite number of rounds, virtually every player and deck will regress to the mean of approximately 80% of the available points. Does that mean that Martin is not truly a fair T1 2P champion? If we had played more rounds, I could have beaten him.

Sorry, but this argument just doesn't fly.

Given an infinite number of rounds, every player and deck will regress to exactly an indeterminate percentage of the available points.

I think. YMT, I need your help. Or Jordan. Or Ken is a math teacher too, right?

No - I was pointing out that if you played an infinite number of rounds you can't calculate your winrate because you can't just go and divide by infinity.

Then again, you can't actually play an infinite number of rounds anyway, so math doesn't really matter in this scenario.

As long as it's just for T12P it doesn't matter to me. I'm pretty much done with that format except for the local/district tournaments we host. If I can scrape up the cash I may move to T2 (!), and of course I'll always play Booster.

When I started reading this thread, I had no idea what "top cut" was.  After reading it, I can't see a fairer way to determine the winner of a tournament the size of Nats.  It guarantees two things:  One, the winner had to win 3/4/5 straight games against his/her best competitors, and two, there will be no heartbreak or complaining over convoluted tie-breakers. 

I think, before throwing out phrases such as "top cut is elitist", it should be judged by how it deals with the problems of Swiss style.  Honestly, anyone can be "elitist" through their attitude and how they conduct themselves/their actions/their thoughts. 

On an aside, I'm still looking forward to my first Nationals experience, so I don't know this firsthand.  But I've heard (and seen on the boards) that Nationals is more about the experience and fellowship than proving you are the best at x-category of Redemption.  So like Pol said, why not try to boost the competitiveness of the experience as well?