Discussion on the "best of x rounds" system

BigRustyRedBigRustyRed Join Date: 2012-11-30 Member: 173786Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Hey everyone,

I don't know how many that actively hang on here check the NSL forums but I made a post on there for discussion on the current "best of x rounds" system we have.

I would like to start a discussion on this topic and see if we can find a good solution together.

The post is here: http://www.ensl.org/topics/869

You can reply to this thread as well and I can relay it over if you don't have an NSL account and are too lazy to make one to post a reply :P

c/p from the NSL thread:
Hey, I saw in the comments on the Balance Mod Cup that there seems to be a problem with the current "best of x rounds" system that has been in brackets on tournaments so far, but I have not seen anyone post about this issue so here I go.

I currently do not have any good solutions around this, but I wanted to open up the discussion and see if we can try to find something better.

The problem obviously is that Natural Selection is a very unique game in that each team plays two very different sides, and regardless of balance of marines and aliens there are a lot of factors that can make teams feel cheated if for example a match goes all alien wins that the side that got aliens first automatically wins.

The solutions I have would be to have it a "best of map" but this would lead to way to long matches for any reasonable tournament schedule, it would mean teams could tie again and again for who knows how many maps.

Another solution would be to play tournaments in a "group stage" style, where you play a set amount of maps, lets say two maps or 4 rounds and then you would have a scoring system, much like we have in the current NSL season.

This would mean that you would have group stages all the way to the finals and the finals them selfs could be top 3 or 4 teams in a group style manner compete with each other for points, the highest scoring team wins the tournament, for ties the teams would have to play as many maps as it would take to break the tie.

This seems more fair overall but might not be what we are looking for in the current world of "e-sports"

Anyway those are my 2 cents, feel free to throw in ideas and lets get a discussion going on if it is possible to come up with a reasonable system that fits the very unique game we all love:)

Comments

  • BestProfileNameBestProfileName Join Date: 2013-01-03 Member: 177320Members
    The problem is that, as we all know, group stages are almost never as exciting as a cup-style tournament.

    The best way to implement it such that both sides get a fair chance is to make sure that if Aliens spawn at X and Marines at Y, that the next round the exact same occurs.

    Something I have suggested is a "tennis style". In tennis you can only win if you break your opponent's game serve or mini-break them in the tiebreak. The problem with this is that you could conceivably end up with endless matches.
    Another way to do it could be by "goal difference". Say you go 3-3 in the cup, then the winner could be decided by the number of points multiplied by their K/D, for example.

    The most fair system is the league system, as you suggest, with the break of the tie. Unfortunately, it's horrific for scheduling the final, and the league system is just not as exciting.
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