Given the few number of teams that are actually playing I think the round robin system worked our really well. It was really fun getting to play all the opponents as well, instead of just a selected few. Round robin could probably work with 8, or perhaps 10 teams as well, if we use the friday as a cup night as well. I'd love another round robin tournament.
It's a bit of a shame that not all matches were getting casted, but you can't get everything, right?
Yeah as the team numbers grew, you might have to split the teams into groups and do a playoff type system. I think its feasible for all tourney sizes though!
I really like seeing all teams playing each other.
<!--quoteo(post=1985304:date=Sep 30 2012, 03:12 PM:name=nadyli)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (nadyli @ Sep 30 2012, 03:12 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1985304"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->With 2 maps instead of one it would be really good. Leaves more room for skill and less for those damned baserushes.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So do 4 rounds per match, split between 2 matches? Would double number of games obviously but make slight slip ups less costly.
<!--quoteo(post=1985304:date=Oct 1 2012, 01:12 AM:name=nadyli)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (nadyli @ Oct 1 2012, 01:12 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1985304"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->With 2 maps instead of one it would be really good. Leaves more room for skill and less for those damned baserushes.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm going to be vain and quote myself from that NS2HD thread: <!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Please consider a round robin format. Competitive players don't want coin flips deciding major factors (server ping, map, faction). Coin flipping and playing an uneven amount of games (ie elimination tournaments) seems so inherently wrong for an NS2 style a-symmetric game. We should focus on limiting coin flips while also giving players and viewers as many entertaining games as possible. Round Robin tournaments do this.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think this assessment is even more accurate after watching the execution of the BBC tournament this weekend. From my perspective as a viewer and competitive player that wasn't participating, it seemed like a more fair tournament than the previous eliminations. There were clearly 3 favored teams going into the tournament. In an elimination tournament, if the bottom 3 teams were matched with any of the top 3 teams then they were most likely going to be immediately eliminated after the first round (or potentially another 1-2 games in the loser's bracket). This leads to frustrating among teams who are looking to these tournaments for competition and practice. In a small community like ours, we have to foster competition and encourage teams to form and play. Single (or even double) eliminations can pit new teams up against experienced teams in which they have no chance of winning. It's not fun to enter a tournament and then get kicked out because you were seeded against the top two teams.
Round robin gives everyone a chance to play everyone. These new teams can enter and if they are crushed by experienced teams then that's fine. They still get to play other newer teams and develop. It also gives everyone more tournament experience, not just the best teams.
One of the criticisms seems to be that RR has more games than a double elimination. While it is true that there are more games played, it does not take longer to conclude. I would wager that it is quicker to conclude because a max of two games are played per round. Rounds will typically finish in less than an hour. In an elimination tournament, up to 3 rounds are played per match. Here's some numbers based on # of rounds (the more accurate predictor of time, not # of games).
Now remember that RR rounds are faster with a max of 2 games per round. The DE will feature 2-3 games per round. This can stall out some rounds of DE by up to 50% more than a similar RR round. Thus, thinking about the RR games, even with 8 teams, is at worst the same duration and at best 2/3rd of the time. Also, more teams competing for more positions in the tournament means more fun. Nobody is eliminated after just 2 matches.
The effect of RR rounds being faster than DE rounds also allows organizers to host a mini-elimination tournament like the BBC did. In the BBC, he took the top 2 (of 6) teams and held a BO5 finals. A 1-game-coinflip was also required to determine 3rd place due to a tie between exertus and duplex. This was half a round (1 game). The finals were BO5, which means they were an effective 1.5-2.5 rounds. This brings the grand total of rounds for a RR->SE(finals) to 7-8 rounds. This is compared to 6-7 rounds that a normal DE tournament would run. Also, because the RR rounds are more efficient (2 games vs 2-3 games), this RR->SE(finals) still concluded faster than a DE tournament would have.
Oh yeah, and did I mention that RR is more fun for the players? This is what is most important. We're not getting paid (or looking to get paid), it's not our job to play NS2. We play for fun.
Now how to handle larger tournaments with a round robin format.
The main disadvantage of RR tournaments is when you get to team counts larger than 8. By definition, a RR style has n-1 rounds. If you have 16 teams, you play 15 rounds. A DE tournament at that number of players run 8-9 rounds. This is where RR starts to fail the time requirements expected for a tournament. But there is a solution!
Random teams into groups, run RR within the groups, pull out the top 1-2 teams and run a mini elimination tournament finals. Example:
Group A: Teams 1-8 Group B: Teams 9-16
Now you run two RR tournaments within these groups. As per my above post, that is 7 rounds. This determines the top 2 teams in each RR. Let's assume that T1 and T9 are top in their respective groups with T2 and T10 as 2nd place.
semi-finals and finals - single elimination: round 1 game 1: T1 vs T10 round 1 game 2: T9 vs T2 round 2 finals: winner g1 vs winner g2 round 2 third place: loser g1 vs loser g2 <-- optional
Total rounds in this situation: ~9. Compared to the 8-9 in a DE tournament. This is also one of the longest formats of RR.
This RR->SE(finals) could be collapsed to a single winner of group A vs winner of group B in a BO3 finals to yield just 8 rounds. Much shorter than the 8-9 of a DE setup.
Please also remember that RR rounds are typically shorter than elimination rounds due to the tie break nature of elimination. This is very important as a properly setup RR tournament is at most a similar number of rounds as a double elimination tournament, yet the rounds are actually shorter and thus the RR tournament as a whole is quicker. Similar logic can be applied to shorten any even n-teams entered into a RR. At 12 teams, you could simply run two 6-team groups (5 rounds) + a SE finals (1 round) compared to a 12team-DE (8-9 rounds).
Wow gorgeous! Gold star!!!! Your responses are the single biggest reason for me to look at the rr for a bigger event.... I still think with more than 8 teams time wise it could be a lot longer, also I really want to work out logistics to watch all the games being played...
All in all it was a lot of fun to watch and ref, I found myself casting with myself in my office while doing my ref duties :)
ScardyBobScardyBobJoin Date: 2009-11-25Member: 69528Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
The Multiple Round Robin + Elimination Tourny for the Winners is more or less how the World Cup works. I've always thought that would be a fitting way to run a NS2 tourny in lieu of seasons/leagues for proper bracket seeding. The biggest issue is that many (if not most) of the rounds will not be streamed/recorded.
blindJoin Date: 2010-04-17Member: 71437Members, Squad Five Gold
I am really glad that this system worked out over the weekend by meanings of coordination and time schedule. At start I was a bit afraid if it will take too long, but we ended up with a shorter tournament than the last ones in the end (which I don't think is too bad, the euros had to go to sleep sunday and the americans had to wake up early).
The downside was, we couldn't stream all the matches because we had only 1 stream available that weekend. There was another caster team doing VODs for some other matches though (youtube.com/hivecasts), but not all were catched.
Still, I am happy about the general feedback for RR :-)
Maybe some ideas what could have been done better in this specific cup?
The good thing about round-robin is that it's possible to play an even amount of games. In elimination you can't allow ties, which means that unless the races are 100% balanced one team will have the advantage in one game. While there are multiple ways to solve this (play until one team wins two games in a row, team with most points get to decide races, coin-toss, etc.) I think it's a good idea to limit the amount of random factors.
I imagine in bigger tournaments you could have multiple group stages. So you'd split 16 teams into 4 groups, put the 2 best teams in each group into 2 new groups and then have a BO5 or BO7 between the 2 top teams. You'd still have random factors for tie breakers, but if we play 2 maps instead of 1 this will happen less often and for the final game we can have the team with the most points pick race for the deciding game.
swalkSay hello to my little friend.Join Date: 2011-01-20Member: 78384Members, Squad Five Blue
edited October 2012
The round robin format is definitely more fair than single or double elimination. The elimination format, not just worse teams can get a bad starting opponent. You can end up seeing some of the better teams knocked out early because of the opponents they are pit up against. While round robin, everyone plays everyone, and your overall round wins counts, not just the first match or two. Definitely a more fair way to compete than elimination brackets. Also, round robin makes for more games, which is great.
This was our first tournament and we were glad we'd have the oportunity to play everyone, gave us a good chance to practice (which we need to do a lot). Plus it's also more fair and less punishing, everyone can have a bad round (baserushes, etc) and in single elimination this would be a big blow.
For big tournaments you can split it up in groups then do the single elimination with the first 2 in each group, like in Champions League, World Cup, etc. it's more entertaining as you have the last rounds seeing who's going to qualify, upsets, etc. But we need more clans for that, obviously.
Even though we lost a ton of matches (and some of them with very stupid mistakes, just like the day before) we took it as practice. We need to learn a lot of things, so this was great for new teams like us.
It was a great cup, good job to everyone involved :)
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
My 2 pence...
When team numbers swell, you can look to Football tournaments like the World Cup, European championships or even the Champions league. Teams are divided into groups before the winners go through and play a direct knockout competition.
I think the round robin format is a winner for sure, but I'd like to see a knockout/playoff system for the winners of groups as it gets larger. This could involve seedings like the world cup, so the currently successful teams avoid each other in the group games.
ZeikkoJoin Date: 2007-12-16Member: 63179Members, Squad Five Blue, NS2 Map Tester
Having now played SE, DE and RR i think that RR is the best format. The lack of need for tie breakers and coin tosses, fast pacing of games, ability to play against multiple opponents even after losing are all great features. And as noted many times RR will still work with higher number of teams by grouping teams and having single elimination tournament in the end.
Comments
It's a bit of a shame that not all matches were getting casted, but you can't get everything, right?
I really like seeing all teams playing each other.
So do 4 rounds per match, split between 2 matches? Would double number of games obviously but make slight slip ups less costly.
2ez4duplex
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Please consider a round robin format. Competitive players don't want coin flips deciding major factors (server ping, map, faction). Coin flipping and playing an uneven amount of games (ie elimination tournaments) seems so inherently wrong for an NS2 style a-symmetric game. We should focus on limiting coin flips while also giving players and viewers as many entertaining games as possible. Round Robin tournaments do this.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think this assessment is even more accurate after watching the execution of the BBC tournament this weekend. From my perspective as a viewer and competitive player that wasn't participating, it seemed like a more fair tournament than the previous eliminations. There were clearly 3 favored teams going into the tournament. In an elimination tournament, if the bottom 3 teams were matched with any of the top 3 teams then they were most likely going to be immediately eliminated after the first round (or potentially another 1-2 games in the loser's bracket). This leads to frustrating among teams who are looking to these tournaments for competition and practice. In a small community like ours, we have to foster competition and encourage teams to form and play. Single (or even double) eliminations can pit new teams up against experienced teams in which they have no chance of winning. It's not fun to enter a tournament and then get kicked out because you were seeded against the top two teams.
Round robin gives everyone a chance to play everyone. These new teams can enter and if they are crushed by experienced teams then that's fine. They still get to play other newer teams and develop. It also gives everyone more tournament experience, not just the best teams.
One of the criticisms seems to be that RR has more games than a double elimination. While it is true that there are more games played, it does not take longer to conclude. I would wager that it is quicker to conclude because a max of two games are played per round. Rounds will typically finish in less than an hour. In an elimination tournament, up to 3 rounds are played per match. Here's some numbers based on # of rounds (the more accurate predictor of time, not # of games).
4 teams: RR - 3 rounds, DE - 4 rounds (<a href="http://www.printyourbrackets.com/4teamroundrobin.html" target="_blank">RR</a>, <a href="http://www.printyourbrackets.com/4teamdoubleelimination.html" target="_blank">DE</a>)
6 teams: RR - 5 rounds, DE - 6-7 rounds (<a href="http://www.printyourbrackets.com/6teamroundrobin.html" target="_blank">RR</a>, <a href="http://www.printyourbrackets.com/6teamdoubleelimination.html" target="_blank">DE</a>)
8 teams: RR - 7 rounds, DE - 6-7 rounds (<a href="http://www.printyourbrackets.com/8teamroundrobin.html" target="_blank">RR</a>, <a href="http://www.printyourbrackets.com/8teamdoubleelimination.html" target="_blank">DE</a>)
Now remember that RR rounds are faster with a max of 2 games per round. The DE will feature 2-3 games per round. This can stall out some rounds of DE by up to 50% more than a similar RR round. Thus, thinking about the RR games, even with 8 teams, is at worst the same duration and at best 2/3rd of the time. Also, more teams competing for more positions in the tournament means more fun. Nobody is eliminated after just 2 matches.
The effect of RR rounds being faster than DE rounds also allows organizers to host a mini-elimination tournament like the BBC did. In the BBC, he took the top 2 (of 6) teams and held a BO5 finals. A 1-game-coinflip was also required to determine 3rd place due to a tie between exertus and duplex. This was half a round (1 game). The finals were BO5, which means they were an effective 1.5-2.5 rounds. This brings the grand total of rounds for a RR->SE(finals) to 7-8 rounds. This is compared to 6-7 rounds that a normal DE tournament would run. Also, because the RR rounds are more efficient (2 games vs 2-3 games), this RR->SE(finals) still concluded faster than a DE tournament would have.
Oh yeah, and did I mention that RR is more fun for the players? This is what is most important. We're not getting paid (or looking to get paid), it's not our job to play NS2. We play for fun.
The main disadvantage of RR tournaments is when you get to team counts larger than 8. By definition, a RR style has n-1 rounds. If you have 16 teams, you play 15 rounds. A DE tournament at that number of players run 8-9 rounds. This is where RR starts to fail the time requirements expected for a tournament. But there is a solution!
Random teams into groups, run RR within the groups, pull out the top 1-2 teams and run a mini elimination tournament finals. Example:
Group A: Teams 1-8
Group B: Teams 9-16
Now you run two RR tournaments within these groups. As per my above post, that is 7 rounds. This determines the top 2 teams in each RR. Let's assume that T1 and T9 are top in their respective groups with T2 and T10 as 2nd place.
semi-finals and finals - single elimination:
round 1 game 1: T1 vs T10
round 1 game 2: T9 vs T2
round 2 finals: winner g1 vs winner g2
round 2 third place: loser g1 vs loser g2 <-- optional
Total rounds in this situation: ~9. Compared to the 8-9 in a DE tournament. This is also one of the longest formats of RR.
This RR->SE(finals) could be collapsed to a single winner of group A vs winner of group B in a BO3 finals to yield just 8 rounds. Much shorter than the 8-9 of a DE setup.
Please also remember that RR rounds are typically shorter than elimination rounds due to the tie break nature of elimination. This is very important as a properly setup RR tournament is at most a similar number of rounds as a double elimination tournament, yet the rounds are actually shorter and thus the RR tournament as a whole is quicker. Similar logic can be applied to shorten any even n-teams entered into a RR. At 12 teams, you could simply run two 6-team groups (5 rounds) + a SE finals (1 round) compared to a 12team-DE (8-9 rounds).
All in all it was a lot of fun to watch and ref, I found myself casting with myself in my office while doing my ref duties :)
The downside was, we couldn't stream all the matches because we had only 1 stream available that weekend. There was another caster team doing VODs for some other matches though (youtube.com/hivecasts), but not all were catched.
Still, I am happy about the general feedback for RR :-)
Maybe some ideas what could have been done better in this specific cup?
I imagine in bigger tournaments you could have multiple group stages. So you'd split 16 teams into 4 groups, put the 2 best teams in each group into 2 new groups and then have a BO5 or BO7 between the 2 top teams. You'd still have random factors for tie breakers, but if we play 2 maps instead of 1 this will happen less often and for the final game we can have the team with the most points pick race for the deciding game.
The elimination format, not just worse teams can get a bad starting opponent.
You can end up seeing some of the better teams knocked out early because of the opponents they are pit up against.
While round robin, everyone plays everyone, and your overall round wins counts, not just the first match or two.
Definitely a more fair way to compete than elimination brackets.
Also, round robin makes for more games, which is great.
For big tournaments you can split it up in groups then do the single elimination with the first 2 in each group, like in Champions League, World Cup, etc. it's more entertaining as you have the last rounds seeing who's going to qualify, upsets, etc. But we need more clans for that, obviously.
Even though we lost a ton of matches (and some of them with very stupid mistakes, just like the day before) we took it as practice. We need to learn a lot of things, so this was great for new teams like us.
It was a great cup, good job to everyone involved :)
When team numbers swell, you can look to Football tournaments like the World Cup, European championships or even the Champions league. Teams are divided into groups before the winners go through and play a direct knockout competition.
I think the round robin format is a winner for sure, but I'd like to see a knockout/playoff system for the winners of groups as it gets larger. This could involve seedings like the world cup, so the currently successful teams avoid each other in the group games.
Moar round robins!