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New Seeding System Idea for Tournaments


tecmobo

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After going to the precursor to the Chicago tourney this week, as well as seeing the discussion about Madison group play blowouts, an idea came to mind for seeding without using even matchups/point differential. Especially at smaller tournaments, it also makes it harder to keep the interest of the new player and build the tecmo scene, since with even matchups they get blown out by the more experienced players.

 

Splitting a tournament into new players and vets, with two different brackets, is one solution. But not an ideal one imo.

 

Another idea to fix this would be to have bracket seedings based on cumulative TPC X Factor difference from group play, so the best seeds are incentivized to call unfair matchups (or choose the worse team if they don't call the matchup). This would add another layer of strategy for both the favorite (deciding whether to call an even matchup or an uneven one, and if uneven, by how much) and the underdog (deciding whether to call an even matchup or call an uneven matchup in the hope that the favorite will go for the X factor points and worse team).

 

Under this system, there'd be better/closer games (i.e. more fun for both sides), and perhaps some upsets if the favorite goes with too weak of a team relative to the opponent's.

 

Bracket play would use the normal matchup system since seeding is completed.

 

Benefits:

 

  • Likely creates more better games at the group play stage
  • Adds strategy wrinkle for which matchup to call and which teams to choose

 

Drawbacks:

 

  • TPC X Factor is not perfect, especially with certain matchups
  • Larger tournaments more likely to have seeding ties when adding up cumulative X Factor difference, so would need a tiebreaker (probably point differential haha, but at least the matchups themselves would be less likely to create blowouts even if everyone tries to score as much as possible)

 

One last thought - the favorite may not win every toss, which could lead to the opponent calling safe/even matchups and hurting the favorite's bracket seeding. One solution to this would be to have the higher seeded player always call the matchup in group play.

 

What do you guys think? Things you like/dislike or that I didn't mention?

 

Edited by tecmobo
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That would be interesting from a strategy perspective for the vets and probably just another level of confusion for a new person. That idea works pretty good for group play as long as there aren't two players fairly equal in skill in the group. Then it kind of sucks.

 

The more minor problem would be  the "X-FACTOR" value would need to be re-done. It was created by one person essentially and its basically arbitrary. It was just their gut intuition on the value of the teams.  At bare minimum a community average rating should be used. 20 peoples values would be WAY more accurate than 1 persons.  

 

Or maybe you just break things up into 4-6 major tiers. 

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If the goal is to avoid extreme blowouts, then use a World Cup style seeding system where group winners play group runners up in a prearranged bracket. Then cap point diff at 28 or 21. The goal then changes from needing to go 3-0 in group play with a massive point diff to just getting to 3-0 with every point above a 21 point lead reduced to a 0. 

 

This still allows for creative matchups, still allows underdogs to choose a matchup that they think works for them, and reduces the need to lay a 70 spot on a kid to move up by 1 spot on the bracket.

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A pt differential cap is probably good because the massive allowable differential basically just serves to shuffle around the original seeds placement into the bracket and slightly undo all the work that goes into seeding. 

 

Given a tie in pt differential the tie breaker could be the original seeding. 

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2 minutes ago, qb_browns said:

If the goal is to avoid extreme blowouts, then use a World Cup style seeding system where group winners play group runners up in a prearranged bracket. Then cap point diff at 28 or 21. The goal then changes from needing to go 3-0 in group play with a massive point diff to just getting to 3-0 with every point above a 21 point lead reduced to a 0. 

 

This still allows for creative matchups, still allows underdogs to choose a matchup that they think works for them, and reduces the need to lay a 70 spot on a kid to move up by 1 spot on the bracket.

 

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TecmoBo, if we can build a Chicago local tournament scene with newer players and you can figure an easy way to calculate the X-factor at a tournament, I would be willing to give it a try in the future.  Although as Bruddog said, it may be confusing for newer players.  I would say the incentive would have to be higher then just seeding as well.  Maybe cash prize for first seed based on record and X-factor.

 

That being said, after putting work into a tier system / guide for newer players, I don't know if a tournament system revolving around newer players is the best idea.  The people that play in these tournaments have to first have desire to play, then willingness to put in effort to get better, and lastly a belief they have a chance at winning or placing in a tournament.  What I have seen here in Chicago is players at least have some nostalgia for the game and desire to play, but aren't ready to put in effort to get better, and don't believe they have a chance at winning or placing in a tournament.  

 

Maybe if we can get a local circuit going at different bars for casual play, we can work at helping players improve and hype up tournaments like Madison, Tundra Bowl, and whatever tournaments we do here.  An event like this may be an opportunity.  This just popped up in my Twitter feed this morning:

 

 

Check out Chicago Tecmo Super Bowl Meetup
http://meetu.ps/c/3vdsP/zQCmY/a

 

 

 

Edited by allamerican1569
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19 hours ago, bruddog said:

That would be interesting from a strategy perspective for the vets and probably just another level of confusion for a new person. That idea works pretty good for group play as long as there aren't two players fairly equal in skill in the group. Then it kind of sucks.

 

The more minor problem would be  the "X-FACTOR" value would need to be re-done. It was created by one person essentially and its basically arbitrary. It was just their gut intuition on the value of the teams.  At bare minimum a community average rating should be used. 20 peoples values would be WAY more accurate than 1 persons.  

 

Or maybe you just break things up into 4-6 major tiers. 

 

Agreed that the X-factor could use a reevaluation. I'd be willing to help on that front.

 

I'm not sure there'd be much confusion for the new players. If anything it gives them more structure when calling teams, since they may not know how teams stack up like the vets do. Tom in chicago does a cool Tier matchup system and has laminated guides at each console to help the newer players, and even though the system was new to most they understood it pretty quickly. Could do the same with the (modified) X-factor chart.

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19 hours ago, davefmurray said:

This is potentially really dangerous.

 

X-factors are not massive. So, you'd see the same, say, 4 matchups by the "pros" once they figured out which matchup gives them the best blowout potential plus x-factor points.

 

Possibly, though if a vet feels comfortable with GB vs. GIA against a newbie for example, I don't see why they'd stop there rather than push the boundaries all the way up to SF vs. IND. One other possibility is that SF vs. IND would be called a lot, though in practice I don't think that would happen much because that's a huge risk even against a newer player. Hard to know for sure without seeing it in practice though.

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19 hours ago, qb_browns said:

If the goal is to avoid extreme blowouts, then use a World Cup style seeding system where group winners play group runners up in a prearranged bracket. Then cap point diff at 28 or 21. The goal then changes from needing to go 3-0 in group play with a massive point diff to just getting to 3-0 with every point above a 21 point lead reduced to a 0. 

 

This still allows for creative matchups, still allows underdogs to choose a matchup that they think works for them, and reduces the need to lay a 70 spot on a kid to move up by 1 spot on the bracket.

 

I do think a point cap is the best approach when using point differential so I'm all for that. But in my opinion avoiding 21+ or 28+ point blowouts is only the secondary goal. The main goal is to make the group play rounds more interesting/better games. A few vets have mentioned that the group play rounds can be boring, so half the day is potentially spent in noncompetitive games (depending on player skill/group strength). Then there's 1-3 good games in the elim rounds unless you make a deep run. So that's why I got thinking about this issue.

 

 

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16 hours ago, allamerican1569 said:

TecmoBo, if we can build a Chicago local tournament scene with newer players and you can figure an easy way to calculate the X-factor at a tournament, I would be willing to give it a try in the future.  Although as Bruddog said, it may be confusing for newer players.  I would say the incentive would have to be higher then just seeding as well.  Maybe cash prize for first seed based on record and X-factor.

 

 

Easy way = Microsoft Excel :-). You may be right about needing more incentive. It's possible people wouldn't risk an upset with an unbalanced matchup just to get a better seed. I'm not sure I would unless I knew how good my opponent was, which can be rare in group play. In fact that might be the biggest drawback.

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46 minutes ago, tecmobo said:

 

Agreed that the X-factor could use a reevaluation. I'd be willing to help on that front.

 

I'd want at least 20 vets to weigh in, especially the consistent winners. 

 

I'd want 2 things.

 

1. Have each person assign each team a rating from 1 to 10. Can use 0.5 to differentiate if needed. MUltiple teams can have the same rating if needed. 

2. List some matchup where a lower rated team may be equal to a higher rated team due to the specifics of the matchup.

 

 

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6 hours ago, tecmobo said:

 

I do think a point cap is the best approach when using point differential so I'm all for that. But in my opinion avoiding 21+ or 28+ point blowouts is only the secondary goal. The main goal is to make the group play rounds more interesting/better games. A few vets have mentioned that the group play rounds can be boring, so half the day is potentially spent in noncompetitive games (depending on player skill/group strength). Then there's 1-3 good games in the elim rounds unless you make a deep run. So that's why I got thinking about this issue.

 

 

 

What's the definition of better or interesting?

 

Of course group play rounds can be boring. At some of the smaller tournaments, group play is pointless, a 6 hour slog to seed everyone to do it all over again. If you want to make things more competitive, then I think you have two choices:

1. Don't invite any noobs to your tournament and keep it vets only

2. Grow your base slowly and methodically so that the noobs keep coming back, have an incentive to get better, and become vets themselves. 

 

Changing a format to include X-Factor, besides posing some issues with X-Factor, doesn't solve the underlying problem. Instead of noobs being blown out and group play being a slog because everyone is running SD-DEN, SD-WAS, Rams-WAS, Rams-MIA, etc you'd have noobs being blown out and group play being a slog with everyone running Pit-DET, Pit-KC, Pit-Was, etc. The few upsets you would see from a vet taking the wrong end of a big play for X-Factor points would be offset by the blowouts from guys who really can pull a Sobhi and use the Pats for all of group play without being scored upon (still the greatest feat in Madison tournament history). The underlying issue is keeping noobs engaged so they come back.

 

That's a larger, more nebulous issue. But the one thing that can be done is to keep having meet ups, keep having tournaments, and keep mixing up formats. Maybe run two separate fields with a pros division and a joes division and have the joe champ play the pro champ for some extra scratch. Maybe have meet ups where the pros have to use NE, IND, SEA when playing against noobs. I would never want to have a meet up where some guy shows up, picks up a controller for the first time in 10 years, and plays Regulator -  that would be a disaster for both of them. 

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Good read fellas love the brainstorming.

Most guys like me on this forum have drank the tecmo Kool-Aid and love how deep you can go with strategy.  

We love this game and we want to get our  buds that loved the game back in the day to drink the Kool-Aid as well but when we start talking tecmo advanced stuff like PC/INT ratio, domain of valid match ups etc. our buds eyes glaze over and check out.  

Our buds want to pick up and play with Bo and put in a flee flicker because that is what they remember.

I think the Major Tourneys need to stay pretty close to what they are doing as those are the ones Vets travel to and competition is high and a chunk of money is on the line.

I think the Minor tourneys need to focus on Fun and comradery with the game.  So xfactor thing is a good idea,, and having vets that are there to help out others.  Especially in group play.  Maybe even pre-seed a few vets beforehand in these minor tournies so they don’t have to worry about playing another vet early in Playoffs.

 

 

 

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On 8/25/2017 at 5:40 PM, qb_browns said:

If the goal is to avoid extreme blowouts, then use a World Cup style seeding system where group winners play group runners up in a prearranged bracket. Then cap point diff at 28 or 21. The goal then changes from needing to go 3-0 in group play with a massive point diff to just getting to 3-0 with every point above a 21 point lead reduced to a 0. 

 

This still allows for creative matchups, still allows underdogs to choose a matchup that they think works for them, and reduces the need to lay a 70 spot on a kid to move up by 1 spot on the bracket.

 

This is what we did in Tomczak V when we had World Cup play. It worked well.

 

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