Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Prof U, I hate to rag on your idea even more than I already have, but this is probably a good time to point out that Soccer pool play works because the teams have already been top cut into the tournament.

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A loophole to using Swiss to get to the knockout stages is that I can now intentionally lose my first game 0-5 to give myself an easier road.  That would be suicide in the current tie-breaker system.  Yes, I take a chance that LS differential ultimately prevents me from qualifying, but I certainly don't have to worry about it during knockout stages.  And in theory as I play easier opponents if I'm winning a game 3-0 or 4-0 with SoG/NJ in my hand I can give out some free LS to manipulate my LS differential to continue playing less difficult opponents.  "Sandbagging" is very common in all forms of competition.

Quote from: STAMP on September 05, 2012, 06:36:24 PM

A loophole to using Swiss to get to the knockout stages is that I can now intentionally lose my first game 0-5 to give myself an easier road.

I would guess that players would prefer to win their first game, face harder competition but have more margin for error (losses) to still make the cut than to lose their first game, face easier competition but have no margin for error.

Tschow,

Tim "Sir Nobody" Maly

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If there was a "best" or "right" option, I think all professional and amateur competitive endeavors would have been using it for years before all of us were born. 

Strictly speaking, in this particular format of competitive play (Competitive CCGs), we do have a system that's used by all three of the major players.

Quote from: STAMP on September 05, 2012, 07:34:27 PM

Quote from: Chris on September 05, 2012, 07:22:17 PM

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If there was a "best" or "right" option, I think all professional and amateur competitive endeavors would have been using it for years before all of us were born. 

Strictly speaking, in this particular format of competitive play (Competitive CCGs), we do have a system that's used by all three of the major players.

For decades, in another particular format of competitive play, all levels except one used a playoff system.  Becoming the "college football" of CCGs does not make it wrong, only different.  And I for one like to be different than the other CCGs.

Let's talk about how that was a terrible analogy because everyone hates college football's system.

I played around with weighting games based on number of losses so far.  It was really hard (basically impossible) to come up with a weight that gave a significant advantage to players playing at the top without making the advantage too significant for players to overcome an early loss.  It also was rather complicated.

I really did like the idea for best 2 of 3 for top cut, even if it was a bit longer. Was really looking forward to using a sideboard.

Quote from: Korunks on September 05, 2012, 08:24:53 AM

Is that not sufficient?  The rest of our tie breaking solutions are inadequate to say the least.

I'm not totally sure, but I don't think it is sufficient for me.  The tie-breaking issue really hasn't been much of a problem in the past until this last summer when it came up at a couple regionals.  Even at Nats this summer the tie that people are talking about is for 7th place, so that really doesn't matter much.  I'm just not convinced that we should make major changes to the overall tournament format if it isn't going to change anything other than clearing up ties.

On the other hand I am more interested in a couple of the other ideas that have come out which seem like they might make the tournament a lot more fair relating to strength of schedule.  The idea from professional soccer of having small pools at the beginning rounds with a more even distribution of top players would be one way to do it.  The idea of weighting the victory points based on the number of wins that your opponent has at that point of the tournament would be another way to do it.  I suspect that the latter solution might ALSO solve the issues of ties.

We've rehashed this issue enough that I doubt either of our minds are going to change

I guess I'm coming around at this point to the idea of top-cut being a good idea from the standpoint of competition.

So I guess the question is whether the benefit to the competition is worth the downside of making the national tournament feel a LOT more exclusive than it has in the past.

I am willing to allow the following trial for this tournament season:

Top Cut will be allowed (not required) for categories over 31 people.  So if the tournament host, with input from his players, wants to give it a try it will be okay with me.
 
Given that, we need to nail down the format for hosts that want to try it.