Swiss-style Tournament Info / Sign-Up!

No problem. I'll be posting a brief write up later on about what I took away and learned from it. Definitely can improve upon it for next time.

I'm also going to be experimenting with a tournament for the finalists (top 4) and see how that works out.

 

Thanks for hosting an event. I didn't have many of the great items, and if I did, I had only 1 copy to use anyway. So I feel the limit was a good way to balance the game some.

There was some issue with being in/not being in the event at the start. Perhaps a posted time limit to show up before the event could help in the future. 10 minutes prior should be doable for anyone, but 5 minutes seemed to be enough as I watched a long chat of really nothing go on while waiting for the event to start.

Events in real life start after the listed time due to organizing participants. Same with sports on TV. There is always some sort of pre-game show or nonsense to rifle through. Just tell us to be there and post that we are ready to play within 5 of start and I think we could avoid this in the future.


The chatbox on the game's MP lobby is tiny for me. With so many people in there it scrolls quite quick. Again I want to ask if a separate chat off the game page could be used.


Using only 4 maps was good. Randomly selected was better. However the selecting of host before each round was sort of confusing, top/bottom. I like it random every round, but having to check the challonge page and that facet was less than stellar. A minor annoyance. Can challonge list some sort of special note on their page for host?

 

Yeah, that is in my notes to do for next time. Same with requiring everyone to sign up for Challonge and having them submit their own scores. That way it is much faster and mainly automated. I'll do a longer write up later on, I'm a bit tired right now from both running *and* playing in the tournament!

 

Also, I'm going to be giving away a small amount of pizza (50) randomly to someone who stayed for the whole tournament. That means "Baalorlord" and "NiskaruTony412" are disqualified as they failed to show for the final match.

I'll give updates on this in the future.

 

So, here's my brief write up and conclusion for this half of the tournament.

Things Learned / Changes For Next Time:

Because of the need to explain how to load maps, how to check Challonge, and who is fighting whom -- it is important that people show up early. Therefore it needs to be made clear that everyone should show up AT LEAST 15 minutes before the start of the tournament for scheduling and checking who is present and who is a no show.

Swiss tournaments are really inflexible for allowing people to come in and drop out. If people leave before the end (like 2 people did) it can really mess it up. Granted, they left during the last round which wasn't problematic, but if someone left during the first round or two it could really skew the results. I'm going to incentivise it for people to stick around the entire time (random drawing for pizza which I still plan to do for this one) and decentivise leaving early (potentially banning from future tournaments).

Since everyone is reporting their scores anyway, make Challonge sign up mandatory and have each player report the scores. That way there is even less downtime, confusion, and possibility of error.

It is indeed possible for someone running a tournament to play in it... although the first 2 rounds were EXTREMELY stressful and definitely caused me to lose one of them due to trying to do two things at once. Not a big deal and this would probably be less problematic if people were made to show up early and sign up and report their own scores on Challonge.

Timer:

11 minute timers seemed fine as there were only 3 issues with timer wins (PaladinGP was in 2 of those matches, one for and one against so it kind of averaged out there). I'd suggest increasing the time slightly (12 minutes) if everyone knew what they were doing (how to load scenarios and how to report on Challonge). Having 20 minute timers is still not feasible unless the tournament is split up over the course of multiple days or weeks, since you have to account for maximum time that each player could possibly take. Since there is a lot of luck in Card Hunter (card draws, die rolls) the more matches someone plays the more accurate the results should be for actual skill -- it seems much better to have 6 shorter matches than 3 longer ones. I'm curious about running a 5 (or 6) minute limit tournament with 12 rounds. I think that would be a lot of fun.

Additionally, all the top winners seemed to have no problem with time. I offered to increase the time for the upcoming tournament, but most thought 11 minutes would be fine so it will stay that way.

Finals Match:

Next week at the same time will be the finals for the top 4 winners. I'll post more details about it soon, but it is going to follow a similar format (11 minute timer, same maps, Epic or lower quality, one specific item per team).

P.S. Anyone who stayed for the entire tournament and isn't in the current top 4 (18 out of the 24) will be entered into a random drawing to win some pizza (it will be a small amount, but something is better than nothing) as a "thank you" for staying around. I'll do the drawing next week during the finals.

 

Some points:

-Maybe increase the rounds from 6 to 8 (many ppl ended up 4-2)

-The substitute char in theory its good, practical i think it sucks, maybe it was my fault,because i thought it was best of 3 so i went with a antiwiz-wiz. and since we didn't know what we would be facing i just used him once, afraid if i used it more and no enemy wiz, i would be in serious disadvantage

-The timer for me was more than enough. most if not all my matches ended before my 7min markers

 

Having more rounds would add more time, I'm not sure if people would want to stick around for a 4 hour tournament (8 rounds). Remember, match winning isn't the only factor, so even if someone ends 4-2 there are tie breakers in place that give much better idea of who is better. It was weird that the top 2 people technically tied, although Eren did beat illkkill in a previous match which tipped it to his favor technically. In theory it is very, very difficult to have actual ties in Swiss using tie breaker systems.

I think the substitute character worked, just you were confused about it being a best of 3 or something. That would have made the tournament last up to 9 hours though... Either way, I switched to my sub after the first 2 matches because I didn't know what to expect and found having the ability to sub gave some flexibility on maps.

Only like 2 or 3 people complained about the timer, so I don't think 11 or 12 minutes is overly problematic. It could definitely be increased to 12 minutes if everyone signed up for Challonge and reported their own scores. 13 or 14 minutes would be pushing it though (2 to 4 minute breaks between matches is not much time to do anything).

 

I don't think (m)any people are complaining that there is too much time. Quite the opposite in fact. I don't see why we couldn't have done 3 or maybe even 4 rounds in ~1 hour, once the tournament had gotten underway. Admittedly, some people chose to make full use of their time and played for 15-20 minutes, but I think we could all manage with less time. If each round was shorter, you would have less people waiting between rounds for the other players to finish. Also, schedule a 10-15 minute break after 1-2 hours (about half way through the tournament), so that people can actually plan to leave after they finish Round 4 (for example) and have to come back by 1:25 pm.
Overall it was still a bunch of fun for most of the players, although I would like to implement a compound prize system, so that people in the lower bracket would likely still play try and beat others in their score division for a small amount of pizza.

 

There were a few people who actually said they thought 11 minutes was more than enough (one of them was in the top 4). The problem with having matches run for 20 minutes, means you *have* to schedule it for minimum of 40 minute slots (more like 45 to 50 to account for problems, score reporting, and setting up next matches). You need to assume that it is possible that every single player takes the entire time. If you don't plan for it and someone does take the entire time it would throw off the entire tournament. You have to wait until everyone reports scores to determine who you're matched with next -- you can't really stagger it.

More matches with lower time is a lot better for determining skill, as you not only get to play against more people with more strategies, but it helps reduce luck being a factor.

The problem with giving prizes in the lower bracket is it might encourage someone who is half way between the top bracket and lower bracket to purposely lose so they are in strong favoring of winning something in the lower bracket.

The only way I can think of keep people around, playing the entire time, trying to win even at lower brackets, and in a system that isn't really abusable is to decentivise leaving and incentivise staying. Maybe have it so the higher you place the more likely you have a chance of winning extra pizza (which I still might do as I just got the feedback on how much pizza I can distribute).

 

More matches is a lot better for determining skill.

More matches with lower time is only good for determining who plays quickly. I don't think that skill at card hunter needs to be equated with being a computational genius who can play at the highest levels without using time. In fact, I object to the notion. Vehemently.

 

I think the ability to think and plan quickly is also a skill. There are pros and cons to both, but for the purposes of getting in the minimum required number of matches for a Swiss tournament (6 rounds for 32 to 64 people) it has to be a smaller time frame. I'd be willing to bet those who complain about the time limit never actually practiced at a reduced time limit and simply played like they used to. Being flexible and able to adapt to different conditions is another type of skill determinant.

 

(emphasis mine) Well, you're wrong about the bit I bolded. Maybe it's true for some people but it sure isn't true of, say, myself or CT5.

And I like that you say "also a skill."

Sure.

And I totally get why you're using short matches—it makes sense for the event's logistics.

So I'm not disagreeing with the end result.

But I don't think it's at all useful to say that quick matches better test skill at Card Hunter. Skill at Card Hunter is incredibly multifaceted, and playing quickly is but one element. One of the best players in the whole game was complaining about your timers, and one of the winners' bracket matches in your tournament—I believe it was a 5th round match between two thus-far undefeated players—went to time. So it is blatantly obvious that good play and quick play are not the same, and that while you can have multidimensional spectra of good play -> sloppy play and slow play -> quick play, and that you can pepper these with all sorts of variables—map familiarity, deckbuilding skill, meta awareness, etc.—at the end of the day, faster games are harder for people, even good players, and do not test more than a subset of skill at Card Hunter.

EDIT: To be clear, I am not arguing with your time limits. I just think it's disingenuous to say that the time limits don't turn the event into a kind of blitz event, in which differently skilled/abled people—not necessarily better players—have an advantage.

 

By the same token though would people with an unlimited time limit (or let's say 30 minutes per side) be a better "test of skill?" As you've said, it is multifaceted and multidimensional, so I don't think removing time from the equation means "more skilled" players will do better.

However, if I'm going to compare it to something like Chess, you'll see the best slow players are also some of the best speed players. It isn't a 1:1 ratio, but saying "I would have done so much better with more time" is not exactly true. Similar studies have been done on tests where people are given unlimited time compared to "normal" time and do not do significantly better.

Ultimately, it is just another facet for skill. Logistically it is a necessity, but it is also something I don't feel is overly problematic. Maybe people just need to practice and learn time management better? Know when you should over analyze something and know when to just go by gut feeling. If the default time was 10 minutes in actual MP matches I wonder if we'd even be having this discussion... it is more about "what you're used to" I think than "what you actually need." People will generally use all time available to them when they are able.

Also, remember that it is the same time for BOTH people. That makes it fair and something you should plan for. Maybe it hampers 3 Wizard teams who have to heavily calculate Line of Sight, but I've done 5 minute matches with 3DC and done fairly well. I think it is all relative.

 

Wizards definitely slow the game down, having to constantly calculate line of sight. It gets 10X worse when you are using a wizard with lots of Wall of Illusion and/or Wall of Stone cards.

I think in the future, any swiss or round-robin style tournaments like this one should be more like a speed tournament, whilst elimination/multi-battle/multi-day tournaments should be more lax in the time available. If you were to sign up for a "Swiss Speed Tournament" then at least you know what you are getting into.

 

Speaking of which... I think my next tournament will be exactly that. Rare or lower, no limit on duplicate items, and a 6 minute time limit. Curious to see how that would work out having 12 matches in 3 hours Swiss-style.

 

I think 12 minutes might really help instead of 11. While there might be some element of people relaxing and subconsciously playing to the time they think is available, I saw the end of all 3 timed out matches and believe they would all have completed with an extra minute on the clock.

 

12 minutes might work if everyone knew what they were doing before the matches started. Like we had a test match or things were more automated (people auto-reporting their score through Challonge).

 

I could probably run 6 minutes just fine.

Speed of play isn't really an indicator of skill. I mean, I lose some games because I'm fairly fast most of the time because it's just no fun for me to ponder my way through 40 minutes games. If I've ticked off 7 minutes, and you time out at 12 complaining you would've won if you had more time is a pretty ridiculous argument, if I had been taking as long as you I probably would have beaten you even worse.

There are only 6 figs on the board, 40 minutes is just too long for that.

 

Posted information about the finals this weekend: http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/swiss-style-tournament-finals.5357/

 

The FINALS have started! Watch the action now and/or check out the bracket here: http://challonge.com/CH_Swiss_01_FINAL