OCF recap thoughts

Snip

Regarding the qualifiers:

I said it previously, why not seed the "top" ranked players further on the brackets? No one expect a no ranked player (someone who doesn't have 10games or hasn't touch a faction in a whole month) or some rank500+ to defeat any of the top50 on the ladder and those guys can't really get anything from a double 10min 500-0 game.

Tournament format: we had practically a tournament of 256th players with 8 qualifying for the finals. 32 players were seeded, but there was a huge disparity on the quality of matchups between them.

Proposal:
This is quick aproach, taking into account the numbers of this tournament.

Q1-Qualy first group: You had 228 players which you need to filter to 32. Bo1 mostly.
You could go for a Bo2 (VP difference) for the qualifying 32 players. This puts an "artificial" clock, which might make it almost a Bo1 for games on which there's a huge VP difference.

Q2: Top32 seeds plays with 32survivors of Q1 - Bo3
R3-R4 Equivalent

Q3: Top16 seeds plays with 16survivors of Q2 - Bo3
Equivalent R5-R6

You want a good seed position for the tournament? Well ladder up (Make it average from best Axis/Allied faction requiring at least 20 games with them)

Here was my proposal to change the qualification system (closed + open qualifier);

In addition to the open qualifier, first run a closed Ro32 qualifier (1 day, first week) for top active ladder players. Those that dont qualify directly from here get a second chance in the longer open Ro128 qualifier (2 days, second week).

So the open qualifier can work like a "loser bracket" for the closed qualifier. Any high seeds in the open qualifier could then be based on the results from the closed qualifier.

As an example;

1. Closed Ro32 qualifier (1 Day, top active ladder players)
6 players qualify for the "Main Event". Including all Ro4 players + 2 invites (winner + loser from previous OCF, so Devm + Aimstrong).

The 2 qualifier invites will have to compete for a high seed in the "Main Event" to skip one opening round.

Play Bo3 until Ro4. The 2 winners of Ro4 play against the 2 invites for a "high seed" in the "Main Event".

2. Open Ro128 qualifier (2 days)
6 players qualify for the "Main Event". Including all Ro4 players + 2 invites (both loser's from previous OCF "winner bracket" and "loser bracket" finals, so OMGPOP + VindicareX).

The 2 qualifier invites will have to compete for a high seed in the "Main Event" to skip one opening round.

Day 1:
Play Bo3 until Ro32

Day 2:
Play Bo3 until Ro4. The 2 winners of Ro4 play against the 2 invites for a "high seed" in the "Main Event".

With a similar qualifier setup like this the setup for the "Main Event" (8 players + 4 invites) can remain the same except one small change. The 4 invited players will first have to play for a "Main Event" seed in one of the 2 qualifier tournaments.

Banning anything short of game breaking exploits is pathetic. It shouldn't be done willy nilly.

The game is the game is the game. If you want to make custom rules for the sake of competition, you may as well just make your own balance mod.


That said, really impressively run tournament.

snip

Hey, just wanted to say thanks for taking my jabs at you nicely. It feels good knowing one's gripes are at least acknowledged.

Ok so I read through this thread yesterday. It was a bummer to read all the flaming, but oh well. There were some good criticisms about the format, as well as concerns about the invites, and plenty of feedback about my casting. I'll address the concerns about the format first, them move on to some of the other stuff.

1) 6 Rounds on Open Quali Sunday was too much

Yep, it sure was. It was my mistake thinking that we could get away with a completely open Quali in one day. We never anticipated OCF would become so big. We never imagined we could raise a $5k prize pool, and we never imagined that Relic would come through with in-game banner support, and we never imagined that we would get almost 600 sign-ups.

Before we knew any of this, we announced that the Open Quali would have no limits. If you signed up and showed up, you'd play. We did this because it's a beautiful thing! We take all comers. No limits. But it makes planning much more difficult, as you have a big variable -- you don't know how many players you will get, so you don't know how many rounds you will need, so you don't know how much time it will take.

In hindsight, we know how many players checked-in: 276. That's 20 more than will fit in a 256-man bracket, requiring 6 rounds instead of 5. Bummer! Perhaps we should have capped the event at 256, but then 20 people would not have gotten to play, so that's a big compromise and one that is maybe a bigger bummer than a long tourney day. So how to resolve this? You have two main options:

A) Make the open quali a 2-day event. For OCF, this was not an option. Planning an extra tourney day must be done weeks in advance and announced to everybody. Both staff and players need to plan their schedules. If we do it again, this option will be considered.

B) Shorten the amount of games played necessary to complete the day in a reasonable time window. The way to do this is more Best-of-1's. This is also a bummer compromise! Nobody likes Best-of-1s, so we resist them as much as possible as organizers. We had already announced that the Ro128 and beyond would be Best-of-3, and we didn't want to go back on that commitment. In the future, I would leave the round format TBA. If a day has to have six rounds, maybe the first four rounds should be Best-of-1, and only the last two rounds should be Best-of-3. This would have better imo, but then we would see the complaints about "I lost cause it was best-of-1." I remember seeing 1024 player events on ESL SC2, all conducted in one day, all best-of-1. They were still crazy marathons, but they got the job done and remained open to all comers.

2) Inviting 4 players straight into The Main Event was unfair

The Main Event was structured to be a 3-day double-elimination event, where no player would be asked to play more than 3 Best-of-3 matches in a single day. This was the priority. To achieve this, we could only take 12 players in the main event. If we had taken 16, there would be too many matches, and some players would be forced to play more than 3 Best-of-3 matches in a single day, which we did not want.

The beauty of a double-elimination event is that no matter how you seed it, the best two players will fight in the finals. This was plainly shown by OCF. Of the four invited players, one reached the finals, two placed in the money, and one placed entirely out of the money. A player from the Open Quali won the whole thing. Without thinking about who did what, this is a pretty perfect result from a tourney organizers perspective.

Many of you think there should not be invites at all. I have to respectfully disagree. We invited players straight into The Main Event for these reasons:

A) We can promote the players and promote the event. Announcing the 4 seeded players and making cool fight cards with their portraits all blinged-out is good for the players, good for the event, and good for the fans. The way that you engage fans in eSports is by introducing them to the real human beings that are behind the computer screen, hidden away on the internet. As a promoter of an event, this is the bread and butter. Nothing brings people to an event like fight cards that feature photos of the best players in the world. The only way to do all of this is to do it early.

B) Removing 4 of the best players in the world (based on past Tournament performance) actually makes the Open Qualifier Tournament more competitive. By removing top players that would have probably cruised through all of the competition in the Open Quali, you encourage the next tier to step up. Players don't have to worry about an unlucky draw where they face the best player in the world in Round 2. Instead of 4 possible Round-of-16 blowouts, you get closer match-ups. Fatigued or not, the Round-of-16 in the OCF Quali tournament provided some of the best games of the entire event. Who will ever forget Siberian vs. KoreanArmy? HelpingHans vs. VindicareX? Symbiosis vs. CaptainSPrice?

3) Ami sucks at casting, misses all the action, etc.

Some of you hate zooms, hate stories about houses, hate stories about anything non-game related. That's fine, fair enough. But plenty of you really enjoy that stuff. Plenty of you, like me, would find the whole experience of being stuck inside a video game for 8 hours pretty damn dry without it. Sometimes naming stuff or naming houses even helps shoutcasters be more clear about what they are describing! They don't have to stumble over vague descriptions like "the Grens garrison the house on the left, you know, the brown one, the one northwest of the church" etc. They can just say "the Grens garrison Ami's house." But I heard you guys. If you look at The Main Event, you'll see that I did less zooms and told less stories than normal.

I can't stress enough how we are desperately in need of quality observers/senders that can actually broadcast these kinds of marquee events. When I was allowed to focus purely on observing (and not casting), I was able to do a much better job. I perfectly captured three countersnipes in one game! I study the way SC2 and DOTA2 observers move their cameras and highlight important events, builds, and units. I try to always move the camera smoothly and do it in a rhythm that makes it easy for the viewer to follow the flow of the game. Yes, I missed the jagdpanzer falling in the Sib vs. KA game, which I will forever regret! But all in all, I would argue that my observing was second-to-none in this scene. Are you better? Show me. We need more dedicated observers. Not only must you capture all of the action, but you must also nail your scene transitions, perfect your overlays/scoreboard, and provide a *perfect* audio mix between multiple caster voices, music, in-game sound audio, and any external sound effects (long live the SNF bells!). If you think you can handle all of this, show us! Your skills are desperately needed.

feedback ftw

We listen to feedback and will continue to endeavor to improve our events on all fronts -- from the tourney format, to promotion, to player support, to stream & cast quality. Thanks for taking the time to give your feedback in this thread, it is greatly appreciated.

I was quite critical of the long opening day and your casting. But overall it was good and its good that you have shown a very positive attitude towards the criticism. I will definitely donate again, and much more, next time.