15 replies to this topic

[razenWing]

Year One, in the name of fairness, PGI came up with the fairest way of all...

198 teams round robin. It's the single most ridiculous decision ever made. For 3 months, FP, QP, and pretty much any P you can think of, died because of time commitment to a 197 game season. At the end, it's like 20% completion rate for all the initial entries.

Is it fair? I guess in theory... when everyone play everyone, that has to be the fairest way of running a comp right?

Except, a competition is not just about fairness, or why bother have playoffs if the regular season is going to decide the winner right then and there?

The fact is, a well rounded competition is one with a little bit of mystery inside. Yes the Patriots went 16-0. But the Miracle on the Helmet stopped them from winning the Superbowl.

So many people quit from what's supposed to be a hype event. An event that's supposed to support the first Mechcon and bring MWO popularity back to the beginning. But, what happened is that... players good enough to play in the giant round robin got burnt out and quit, and player NOT good enough couldn't find players and also quit.

So came year 2, after the gigantic debacle... PGI came up with the bright idea of just letting you choose your own opponent for qualifying. People make their own schedule, and no one gets burnt out by a massive schedule, right?

Except this time around, the hype is considerably less. With no organized scheduling, no caster can get in to broadcast events. There are no 1 hour stream of EMP vs EON, following by 228 vs ISEN, followed by x vs Y. It was an event of complete silence. Except for the most hardcore dedicated players that's actually playing, casual wannabe fans have no idea when it started and when it ended. There's just one announcement page sometimes in some month, that 3 teams have been chosen to go to Vancouver. What's their records? Who knows. Who they beat? Couldn't tell ya.

Let me explain why such ELO FFA system is terrible. First of all, these are not club soccer teams in Europe. They don't have sponsors. They aren't professionals. They don't have contracts. As a result, there are no advertisements. No fans, and no interests.

Now come year 3, PGI came up with a revolutionary idea... STOCK MODE!

Except, they kept the ELO FFA format, which established from year 2, is pretty gosh darn awful. No one outside of the comp circle knows that it's going on. No one really care either. Again, no matches are being streamed. No hype, no interest.

Except... it shouldn't be.

It shouldn't be THIS hard to raise interest. And to do that, all you need to do is understand the true nature of MWOWC. It's an amateur tournament.

EMP, EON, 228... those are all just really good amateur players. They aren't getting paid to play MWOS. No one is. So why are we treating this like professional tournament of FFA ELO where you except people to diligently seek out qualified opponents for quality matches?

But there are ways for amateur tournament to thrive. One comes to the mind, the biggest amateur tournament in the entire United States where a whole month is named after it...

The March Madness.

Yes, bring back the inclusiveness of the first tournament where THOUSANDs of people signed up, but make it a HUGe single elimination tournament with set schedules. Everyone participate. Everyone feel like they are part of it. And because of single elimination, everyone has a chance to pull off upsets (combo with shenanigans like this year's stock mode... imagine the emotion). Because there are set scheduling, your hype man (streamers) can actually promote your "fights" FOR FREE!

The first week of first year of MWOWC, Rjbass and others were getting like 300-400 views per stream. Way more than right now, where theb33f command at most 150 viewers. Let them work for you! People care if people feel like they are part of something.

Yet, this seems to be an incredibly hard concept to understand. People don't care if you got the right winner. People could care less if fairness is called into question because EMP is knocked out in the round of 16. Champion of playoffs is not always the best team. That's why playoffs are worth watching.

Did the 90s Lakers not always have the best team with Shaq and Kobe? Yet they lost twice to Pistons, some of the ugliest and quite qualified as the ugliest team in regular season. THAT is the magic of playoffs. No one care if some other Eastern conference team should have made it.

An exciting tournament will drawn out those "rigged" noises. No.1 seed in the NCAA don't win every year. In fact, they seldom win the tournament. But comes the final four, this sporting event will cause more Americans to miss work than NBA and MLB Chamionships put together. (Probably not superbowl, as that's more of an event where even super casual go watch the halftime show, so that doesn't quite count, and football is also single elim)

No one say to cheat and rigged the system so that best 4 teams "coincidentally" meet in the final. But people do want an exciting and inclusive tournament. "SKX beat us last week, I hope the next round, JHG will avenge us."

"JHG avenged us? I am their fan now, let's hope they beat 55KK"

Those are the convos that should happen to EVERYONE. Not some meaningless ELO FFA, which is absolutely poo on a stick where no one talks about.

So PGI, do the right thing. Maybe you intend to announce MWO closing shop at this year's mechcon, I don't know. Cause this format, which all the fans deserved, is way overdue.

Hype, Excitement, Single Elimination.

YOU can be the Champ.

[HGAK47]

Wait, so whats going on exactly? PGI being PGI?

[Vxheous]

There is a tournament double elimination bracket, known as the "semi-finals" of MWOWC. The comp queue is only for seeding into those slots. MWOWC 2017's Semi-finals weekend was like a 12 hr stream marathon from bandit and mdmz0, which determined the three teams that went to Vancouver (much like your idea for march madness NCAA style)

Edited by Vxheous, 30 June 2018 - 07:51 PM.

[razenWing]

Vxheous, on 30 June 2018 - 07:49 PM, said:

There is a tournament double elimination bracket, known as the "semi-finals" of MWOWC. The comp queue is only for seeding into those slots. MWOWC 2017's Semi-finals weekend was like a 12 hr stream marathon from bandit and mdmz0, which determined the three teams that went to Vancouver (much like your idea for march madness NCAA style)

So, why not single elim from the start? The whole point of inclusivity is not to have this confusing ELO which current has like... 20 teams playing? 160 players... a far cry from the thousands that entered WC1.

Imagine... super large single elim from the start, 2-3k players participating. first day, 1-2 players go home. 48 hour super hype stream

then round 2, same thing...

Round 3... same thing...

Final 4 go to Vancouver. for best of 3 (final match best of 5)

[Bluttrunken]

I don't want to comment on anything else but I agree that it's way too silent between the announcement and the finals at Mechcon. The only thing that reminds me that qualifiers are going on right now is my tournament supporter pack.

[Vxheous]

razenWing, on 30 June 2018 - 10:41 PM, said:

So, why not single elim from the start? The whole point of inclusivity is not to have this confusing ELO which current has like... 20 teams playing? 160 players... a far cry from the thousands that entered WC1.

Imagine... super large single elim from the start, 2-3k players participating. first day, 1-2 players go home. 48 hour super hype stream

then round 2, same thing...

Round 3... same thing...

Final 4 go to Vancouver. for best of 3 (final match best of 5)

Hard to fill brackets off the start. How do you determine who goes where? Unlike march madness, where there are 4x 1-16 seeds, MWO teams don't have any such seeding. Comp queue is specifically set up for seeding purposes.

[Marius Evander]

If you had given Russ this Idea in January it MIGHT have happened, his twitter gives the impression he's a big N.A. sports fan.

But nothing will happen now the 4 month pub crawl has started.

Its funny when I jokinging mention Comp Stock tournament in QP on odd occasion most people havent got a clue what it is.

[Jay Leon Hart]

razenWing, on 30 June 2018 - 05:59 PM, said:

First of all, these are not club soccer teams in Europe.

[tangent]
Football. It's called Football. The rest of the world knows this. You kick the ball with your feet. Football.
[/tangent]

[razenWing]

Jay Leon Hart, on 01 July 2018 - 02:42 AM, said:

[tangent]
Football. It's called Football. The rest of the world knows this. You kick the ball with your feet. Football.
[/tangent]

Did you know... the term "soccer" came from EUROPE?

Just saying...

------------

Anyways, Cado, I don't disagree with you. It's just weird how in the grand scheme of putting a tournament together for their now 2 days mech extavaganza, SOMEHOW, no one thought of this.

Vx: Random. Put all the teams in 1 giant draw and let the computer fill in the bracket. That's what you do to an actual amateur tournament. Think Karate Kid, it's not like the Bay Area organizers intentionally split Kobra Kai and Miyagi Dojo up, plot armor did that. And again, nobody care if complete fairness is the way to go, people just want an exciting tournament. So it doesn't matter if it's EON vs EMP in round 1. But then who is to say that EMP won't accidentally get knocked off in round 2 by GM21? That's what makes single elimination matches exciting.

Again, these are not pro players. There are no team sponsors. No one is getting paid to play MWO. So accuracy of "best" team winning is not important. Think of it more like a celebration of MWO supporters and fans that got together to have a super fight instead of a pro circuit to determine "the best" team.

Part of the fun is also to trace your and your favorite team and see the many many players you know along the way. (Like in MC1) There's absolutely none of that in WC2 and now. Look, WC has became so irrelevant for many, that it's almost like random show matches. If that's the case, just contact proton, b33f, and whoever individually, and invite them for an "invitation only" 2 day round robin. It doesn't make a lick of difference to casual fans, cause we all know who is going to Vancouver (Eon, EMP, and some faction of 228). If that's the case, then who cares if PGI has this fake ELO FFA to decide how convincingly those 3 teams will go vs just straight up invite them?

Either do the tournament right and involve EVERYONE to build up hype, or just scrap the whole thing and make it some insider show match.

Edited by razenWing, 01 July 2018 - 06:31 AM.

[SFC174]

Hey, the Brits called it soccer first (colloquialism for association football vs. rugby football - wait they called rugby football too? - sacrilege). Naturally, since thems the ones that invented the English language, folks from the USA said, "good enough!".

It would have been better served to call it "a bunch of actors falling down all over a grassy field when caressed by the breeze of a passing competitor" (a drama which the NBA appears to be trying to emulate). Just don't expect us to call those pomme frites "chips", or aluminum aluminium, you limey ********.

[Jay Leon Hart]

razenWing, on 01 July 2018 - 06:27 AM, said:

Did you know... the term "soccer" came from EUROPE?

Just saying...

Yes, but it was widely dropped for football, because not everybody is a toff

[Jay Leon Hart]

SFC174, on 01 July 2018 - 06:34 AM, said:

Just don't expect us to call ... aluminum aluminium

I mean, sure, you can say it as wrong as you like

[Magnus Santini]

I got briefly interested when PGI announced some event to get people into it. There was goIng to be prizes for playing, casual teams, etc. PGI wrote the news on the back of a postcard and put a coffee mug on it. Brief debate ended up with no extension, no more teams allowed, no prizes, no fans. How is that going for esports? At this point they need youth leagues more than the championships. Could not care less anymore, but it would have been fun to try with my casual team even if we got eliminated by champs in round 1.

[Xeno Phalcon]

Jay Leon Hart, on 01 July 2018 - 02:42 AM, said:

[tangent]
Football. It's called Football. The rest of the world knows this. You kick the ball with your feet. Football.
[/tangent]

Well at least hes not a hockey fan, those guys gets even more bent out of shape, growing beards in the off season and never changing their lucky undies....

[Splatshot]

Xeno Phalcon, on 01 July 2018 - 08:40 AM, said:

Well at least hes not a hockey fan, those guys gets even more bent out of shape, growing beards in the off season and never changing their lucky undies....

You have no idea the amount of stitches those beards save.

[Vxheous]

Magnus Santini, on 01 July 2018 - 08:25 AM, said:

I got briefly interested when PGI announced some event to get people into it. There was goIng to be prizes for playing, casual teams, etc. PGI wrote the news on the back of a postcard and put a coffee mug on it. Brief debate ended up with no extension, no more teams allowed, no prizes, no fans. How is that going for esports? At this point they need youth leagues more than the championships. Could not care less anymore, but it would have been fun to try with my casual team even if we got eliminated by champs in round 1.

You can enter your team into the comp queue Tues/Thurs/Sat. If you're really interested in fighting the "Champs", EmP plays the comp queue from about 9pm est to whenever the queue's dry up (usually about 11:30pm est). All you need to do is play 20 games in comp queue and you'll get rewards. EmP is currently re-tooling our Tournament line up, with a bunch of players on tryout status, but you should still be able to get a taste of what it's like to fight EmP in a comp setting.

@RazenWing, seeding does matter, even though we are all "amateurs". There are years worth of competitive leagues/data, and even 2 previous World Championships to draw on, it's not like it's the first MWO tournament ever and so there's no idea which "amateur" teams will be good/bad. Again, the Comp queue isn't their spectator version of the tourney, it's strictly seeding. PGI will broadcast most if not all of the brackets portion of the tourney, with hopefully more advertisement on the site, ingame, etc this year (though it's PGI, and they suck at that sort of stuff).

While no one gets paid to play MWO, EmP had a hardware sponsor in Ninox, who provided a number of gaming mice for EmP members.

Edited by Vxheous, 01 July 2018 - 08:12 PM.