34 replies to this topic

[InnerSphereNews]

The Spirit of the Tournament:

At its core, the MechWarrior Online World Championship Tournament is a “Best of the Best” Tournament, intended to pit the 8 best players from each Team against their opponents in a fight for the title of Regional or World Championship.

The structure that we have chosen for the Tournament is intended to be fair and inclusive across the board, from start to finish; it is our goal to ensure that everyone who enters the tournament has a fair chance in the name of sportsmanship and fair play.

Scheduling of the Tournament Matches:

With no existing seed or official ranking system in place with which to draw from, the tournament has been structured as a Round Robin to help ensure sure that every team an equal opportunity to participate, with each team playing against every other team in their Region at least once. In order to keep this process as streamlined as possible, and to have all matches completed in a timely manner, each match will be a best-of-1 in the Conquest game mode.

If a team loses once, they are not eliminated from the tournament as a whole. That loss is simply marked in that team’s Tournament standings. Once all of the Regional Qualifier matches are complete, the top five teams from each region with the most amount of wins will move on to the Regional Finals.

While we strongly encourage Teams to field their 8 best players in each match as often as possible to ensure victory, we understand that life events and scheduling conflicts do arise, and thus provided up to a maximum of four additional players slots to be filled by relief players. Given our desire for making this a true “Best of the Best” competition, we believe that the maximum of 12 Team Member slots provides sufficient leeway for tackling potential scheduling issues, should they arise.

That being said, the current Regional Qualifier schedule was released last week, and can be found here. This was initially going to be a rigid schedule, with matches only being conducted at the assigned times, but based on feedback and subsequent investigation, we will be making the following adjustments outlined below. We believe these adjustments will help to mitigate some of the larger concerns we’ve seen regarding match scheduling.

• Teams can agree to play their assigned match at any time prior to the end of the week of their scheduled time slot.

• This means that as long as the match is played by the end of day of the Sunday in their scheduled match week, the match will count.
• Example: Two Teams can agree to play their match, officially scheduled for Thursday September 22^nd, at any time prior to Sunday September 25^th at 11:59 PM. If they so choose, the two Teams can agree to play that match even as early as the official start of the Regional Qualifiers in June.

• Both teams will be required to submit a screenshot of the results, with the understanding that doing so affirms that both Teams agree with the match outcome and that there are no complications or issues with the match as it was conducted.
• Matches that are played outside of the official, scheduled time slot will not have an official Tournament Referee.
• If there are any rule violations in a match, or if a Team has any issues with the match as it was conducted, Tournament Officials must be notified. Pending the result of an official review, the match in question may then have to be played at its original, officially scheduled time in order to be counted.
• A new forum sub-section will be created for Tournament participants, to be used for match scheduling.

This should provide all Teams with greater flexibility as to when they play, and to better adjust match scheduling according to player availability.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

For clarity.

You would be happy for us to block schedule for example the first months entire games on one evening prior to the first sunday of the first weeks game

[Malicious1]

The only rub I see is this:

What if one team wants to reschedule and the other doesn't and shows up at the appointed time? If the ref is there to verify one team's attendance, does the other who couldn't play at that time still forfeit?

Edited by Malicious1, 24 May 2016 - 12:53 PM.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Malicious1, on 24 May 2016 - 12:53 PM, said:

The only rub I see is this:

What if one team wants to reschedule and the other doesn't and shows up at the appointed time? If the ref is there to verify one team's attendance, does the other who couldn't play at that time still forfeit?

If you cant agree a date prior to the cut off sunday your original date and time will stand.
At least that would be the obvious thing.

Edited by Oderint dum Metuant, 24 May 2016 - 12:55 PM.

[Igor Kozyrev]

what about the tournament client?

[coe7]

Why not have a official fallback dates? If we go and ask another team could we reschedule, they will know that a) we can't make the official date atleast not easily and there is no reason for them to reschedule if they do not get a benefit. With official week where to postpone games that are literally impossible for team to make, would ease these issues.

2nd. Why in the gods name do we have to play with minimum of 8 people in the match? Why there has to be 8? There are several teams on that list that could easily win games with 6 players vs full 8. Denying this possibility and forcing team to have 8 or they will automatically lose is stupid.

What the hell does it matter do you have 5,6,7 or 8 people playing? If a team wants to play "man or two" down and still win, isn't that just good? Why do you automatically lose if you can't get 8 online?

Your format is 2-2-2-2, let the team who is down a man drop mechs on any weight class they want. So team A only has 6 players, well they will choose to drop one medium and one heavy, and then you play 6 vs 8. How can this be unreasonable?

Edited by coe7, 24 May 2016 - 01:14 PM.

[Paradox42]

Or you could just say. Dear players, we are not going to solve the problem. Here, go solve it yourself. Good luck!

This is not a solution, that is a bad cover up. This is going to cause countless problems. If you have a difficult opponent you are simply not agreeing to a different time and day for the game and hope they have to forfeit. This is still not going to work. We are still looking at countless forfeits and everything but a possible schedule. Sure it is nice to be able to reschedule yourself, but as long as there is this schedule in place we still have a problem. And a big one.

Edited by Paradox42, 24 May 2016 - 01:14 PM.

[coe7]

Overall, what should have been done is that make leagues randomly of 10 teams each, have them play round robin and winners of each league progress forward. This full RR is absolutely stupid. Sure, my team can handle 60+ comp games, but 90% of teams registered to this tournament will die due internal strains after 10 games. Half of them have not even played a single competetive game in their life and the first time they go is a full RR of 60+ games? ...

You remember what happened to your own PGI team playing MRBC in the lowest division available? Half of the registered teams are even worse and mind you, they dont have ex top tier players herding cats like your own PGI team had. Now put that PGI team thru 10 times more matches and think what will happen.

Edited by coe7, 24 May 2016 - 01:18 PM.

[Croaker Munin]

So after all the negativ feedback regarding Scheduling of the Tournament Matches, they basically give us one week to reschedul?

Jupp that fixes everything! I stop writing now, before I get salty.

I thought we could have some fun with the tournament .

Edited by Croaker Munin, 24 May 2016 - 01:19 PM.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Paradox42, on 24 May 2016 - 01:13 PM, said:

Or you could just say. Dear players, we are not going to solve the problem. Here, go solve it yourself. Good luck!

This is not a solution, that is a bad cover up. This is going to cause countless problems. If you have a difficult opponent you are simply not agreeing to a different time and day for the game and hope they have to forfeit. This is still not going to work. We are still looking at countless forfeits and everything but a possible schedule. Sure it is nice to be able to reschedule yourself, but as long as there is this schedule in place we still have a problem. And a big one.

True but that also does the difficult team no favours, they have to commit to 3 evening single games per week instead of consolidating them....it also means nobody wil cut them slack if they cant make one

[Ibrandul Mike]

You could reschedule for example 10 matches for the first week. That wouldn´t give away if you could play on that date and you have one evening with more matches

[Scout Derek]

There's one thing I wanted to clarify:

Both teams, if they are to reschedule, must agree on the said date as well as the Referee with them, and announce that they are rescheduling. If a team wishes to reschedule, as per said, there will be a forum

IF Team B does not show up, Team A MUST provide proof that the Referee of the said reschedule agrees with the fact that Team B did not show up, and so on.

There is still some things to work out, and will be updated a bit more as we move closer to the Competition dates. For now I've covered the part about rescheduling and such.

I'll try and answer some questions to the best of my abilities.... but it is above my pay grade, least I'm trying to answer some questions at this time.

[coe7]

Ibrandul Mike, on 24 May 2016 - 01:35 PM, said:

You could reschedule for example 10 matches for the first week. That wouldn´t give away if you could play on that date and you have one evening with more matches

You sound like you don't have much experience in rescheduling comp matches. If it worked like that world would be such an happy hippie place. But experience tells me it does not. I suggest you browse MRBC match reschedule forums for happiness and information.

Edited by coe7, 24 May 2016 - 01:42 PM.

[cg fu]

Hello PGI leadership team,

Our team plays Mechwarrior casually, and is looking forward to participating in the tournament. Based on the current structure however, this will be extremely difficult. Based on my experience as an admin in other competitive games and leagues, I would strongly urge PGI to take the following steps:

Most importantly, please make the standalone tournament client available ASAP for people to download that don't have high bandwidth internet connections. If the tournament is supposed to be "inclusive" than you need to give people time to get the client installed and set up their mechs. Not everyone can afford high bandwidth internet.

Priority:

1. Re-open registration. Allow more than 12 players to register per roster. (16 would be ideal, given the # of matches you are expecting to play, and the length of time the opening round is going to take.)

If not than:

2. Reduce the number of matches. The current format of playing everyone once, which is a nightmare in North America, should be altered to a system whereby teams are allocated into random pools of X number of teams, and then structure elimination based on performance in those pool matches. Many teams will be compelled to forfeit in the current structure, and that could be easily avoided with common sense.

If that fails:

3. You must provide teams the option to play down a pilot or two. Few casual teams are going to adjust their schedule to play mechwarrior for the next several months. That would be unrealistic and ridiculous.

Thank you for your consideration and for hosting the tournament.

Edited by cg fu, 24 May 2016 - 01:45 PM.

[Liveish]

How will the teams have have two games at the same time work for fall back times ?

[Captain Alt F4]

Ok, I'm going to put two cents here.

The one suggestion I do agree with is allowing registration of up to 16 players, OR allowing teams to remove a player and replace them if the situation warrants. OR allow teams to play with less members in the regionals. Sure we might get beaten, but we at least turned up and fought with 6 men, not forfeited because someone had to work late, or whose kids had to go to hospital.

We only got 11 people to register, more were interested but 12 invites were sent out, only 11 accepted on time (Our problem there). Already one of our members who was very keen is looking like a non participant. WHY? Because they have been diagnosed with a health issue (Very bad) AND got evicted on the same day from their rental. This is real life! Stuff happens. So we are looking at a 10 man team spread across 3-4 time zones, and half of them have families.... scheduling 3 matches a week for x weeks.

By allowing 16 player teams, or allowing substitutions would great mitigate real life scenarios like above and provide a fuller, happier tournament experience... for everybody.

Edited by Captain Alt F4, 24 May 2016 - 02:27 PM.

[Insects]

Malicious1, on 24 May 2016 - 12:53 PM, said:

What if one team wants to reschedule and the other doesn't and shows up at the appointed time? If the ref is there to verify one team's attendance, does the other who couldn't play at that time still forfeit?

Is it really necessary to be nasty about forfeits? Nice thing to do is to just let them miss the match and reschedule.
At least up until the deadline approaches and teams have to make a commitment to get it done.

The good thing about the new system is that games can be unscheduled.
Everyone can agree that Sunday night will be comp night, teams assemble with no actual opponents scheduled, jump in the comp teamspeak channel and agree to play any team they havent fought immediately.
Most of the games can be burnt through by that method and only a handfull will require a set schedule.

Yeah there is still a flaw in that the "unemployed mums basement dweller" teams can refuse to reschedule and therefore force a lot of forfeits.
But its a huge improvement over the previous situation.

Still too many games and it should be split into qualifier pools or have a sudden death qualifier process to cull the field down.

[Tarogato]

So if I read this correctly, PGI's stance is, "We don't know how to fix this... so we'll let you deal with it on your own if you want to try to make it better. Oh, and if you screw it up, you still have to be present for the pre-determined time and date."

Edited by Tarogato, 24 May 2016 - 03:16 PM.

[El Switchblade]

At least it's something... Right?

[Elizander]

coe7, on 24 May 2016 - 01:15 PM, said:

Overall, what should have been done is that make leagues randomly of 10 teams each, have them play round robin and winners of each league progress forward. This full RR is absolutely stupid. Sure, my team can handle 60+ comp games, but 90% of teams registered to this tournament will die due internal strains after 10 games. Half of them have not even played a single competetive game in their life and the first time they go is a full RR of 60+ games? ...

You remember what happened to your own PGI team playing MRBC in the lowest division available? Half of the registered teams are even worse and mind you, they dont have ex top tier players herding cats like your own PGI team had. Now put that PGI team thru 10 times more matches and think what will happen.

I completely agree with this. PGI can even have the top 2 teams of each Round Robin group move forward and if there is no seeding info then just seed randomly. I would prefer to limit groups to 8 teams at most and advance the top 2 of each and you already eliminate 75% of the participants within the time it takes to get 7 rounds done.




Rules like these have been out for a long time now and it's just a simple check Google for examples. Please, please, please think of the players and what they have to go through in this experience before you make up rules.

It's just common sense not to burn out your playerbase out like this and that's what this system will do because it's tedious and that leads to great inconvenience. The trouble of scheduling a match is exponentially magnified due to the insane number of games!

El Switchblade, on 24 May 2016 - 04:40 PM, said:

At least it's something... Right?

The schedule is already bad, but they are making it horrific with the number of times you have to schedule. In simple words:

Scheduling a match is inconvenient. Let's make them do it 60-80 times instead of just 7.

Edited by Elizander, 24 May 2016 - 04:54 PM.