Last year, during BlizzCon, we announced that we were working to bring one of the most requested competitive game modes to StarCraft II: Automated Tournaments. Tournaments speak to the competitive StarCraft II experience even more than the ladder, and we’ve been hard at work on building this feature into something truly promising. Now that we’ve spent some time building this feature, we are ready to show you what we’ve been working on.
Please keep in mind that everything you see here is a very early implementation of Automated Tournaments. There are still features to be added, bugs to be fixed, and feedback to be received. Nevertheless, we felt that it was time to offer this feature to our players so that we could gather the testing and feedback needed to ensure that Automated Tournaments ends up becoming the best feature possible.
Signing Up:
With that said, let’s begin with a general rundown of how you can expect to use Automated Tournaments. Upon first logging in, you should notice that “TOURNAMENTS” is now clickable on the navigation menu.
After clicking it, you’ll be taken to the main tournaments portal. Here, you can view when the next tournament is taking place and sign up for it. There are two tournament formats:
3-Round Tournaments Schedule: Monday–Thursday Duration: Approximately 60–90 minutes Format: Single-elimination bracket 6-Round Tournaments Schedule: Friday–Sunday Duration: Approximately 3-4 hours Format: Group Stage -> Single-elimination bracket
Preparing for a Tournament Match:
After choosing a race and signing up for a tournament, you’ll wait for it to begin. You may only enter one tournament at a time, and once the tournament begins, you are locked into that tournament even if you log out or close your client; any matches you do not play will be automatically forfeit.
Once the tournament begins , you will receive a notification (even while in-game) that will take you to prepare for your first match. You will get a chance to veto up to three maps of your choice each round, allowing you to cater your map choices to the opponent you’re playing next. Your opponent will do the same, not knowing your veto choices. You’ll be able to see your opponent’s win record on each map to help with your veto decisions.
Each match in a tournament is currently limited to 25 minutes. This would equate roughly to a 35-minute game in Heart of the Swarm due to the game-clock changes in Legacy of the Void. If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value. Experience is accrued throughout the game by earning money, constructing units, destroying units, etc.
Tournament Progression:
Finishing a match will mark you as ready for the next round, and once everyone is marked as ready, the next round will start. If you mark yourself as ‘not ready,’ you will have until the start of the next round before you have to check in again.
We’ve implemented matchmaking in Automated Tournaments in an effort to make it fair for players of all skill levels. Please keep in mind that the matchmaking experience may not be optimal due to a smaller player pool in the beta.
Looking Forward:
Going forward, we have plans to make it so that you are automatically joined into a private chat channel with players in your tournament. We also are planning to add Automated Tournament rewards that will be visible in other areas of StarCraft II.
Due to the nature of this feature, it is more difficult to get a lot of internal playtesting compared to other parts of the game. Please do your best to try out various combinations and let us know if you find any bugs! Automated Tournaments should provide a gripping experience for those who value high-stakes StarCraft II competition. So if you enjoy the competitive side of StarCraft II, we hope you are as excited to try out the new game mode as we are to hear your thoughts. Thank you very much, please remember to submit your feedback, and we’ll see you in the finals!
Each match in a tournament is currently limited to 25 minutes. This would equate roughly to a 35-minute game in Heart of the Swarm due to the game-clock changes in Legacy of the Void. If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value. Experience is accrued throughout the game by earning money, constructing units, destroying units, etc.
It's important to note that there is currently a time restriction on the matches.
I think what is great is that at least they have map veto's built into this system.
Each match in a tournament is currently limited to 25 minutes. This would equate roughly to a 35-minute game in Heart of the Swarm due to the game-clock changes in Legacy of the Void. If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value. Experience is accrued throughout the game by earning money, constructing units, destroying units, etc.
It's important to note that there is currently a time restriction on the matches.
I think what is great is that at least they have map veto's built into this system.
So what you do is you play the most efficient composition in the game and wait for 25mins to expire. God damn it Artosis is going to rock this one.
Each match in a tournament is currently limited to 25 minutes. This would equate roughly to a 35-minute game in Heart of the Swarm due to the game-clock changes in Legacy of the Void. If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value. Experience is accrued throughout the game by earning money, constructing units, destroying units, etc.
It's important to note that there is currently a time restriction on the matches.
I think what is great is that at least they have map veto's built into this system.
So what you do is you play the most efficient composition in the game and wait for 25mins to expire. God damn it Artosis is going to rock this one.
I think 25 min is enough to end the game, and if you see turtle you just max expand and get more points etc.
hhhmmm 25 mins most of my games are normally not that long but starting to get there but am i the only one who finds that kinda silly. I understand its an online tournament for no money so you dont want to waste peoples time, but people can just play a efficient comp and just wait out the time.
Also this is really when we need to do something about hacking. I haven't noticed any hackers yet but ive played maybe 50 games due to life an all but theres going to be and there for sure going to troll these tourneys.
On August 20 2015 04:14 starslayer wrote: hhhmmm 25 mins most of my games are normally not that long but starting to get there but am i the only one who finds that kinda silly. I understand its an online tournament for no money so you dont want to waste peoples time, but people can just play a efficient comp and just wait out the time.
Also this is really when we need to do something about hacking. I haven't noticed any hackers yet but ive played maybe 50 games due to life an all but theres going to be some and there for sure going to troll these tourneys.
I see that having some time restriction is inevitable, but if the games are decided by more XP gathered, it would only be fair to at least display your XP in-game somewhere. That way you could have an idea if you are in a winning position should the timer expire soon.
On August 20 2015 04:14 starslayer wrote: hhhmmm 25 mins most of my games are normally not that long but starting to get there but am i the only one who finds that kinda silly. I understand its an online tournament for no money so you dont want to waste peoples time, but people can just play a efficient comp and just wait out the time.
Also this is really when we need to do something about hacking. I haven't noticed any hackers yet but ive played maybe 50 games due to life an all but theres going to be and there for sure going to troll these tourneys.
Not having a time limit is even worse for the system though. This is the lesser of the two evils. Most tournament games end faster than 35 HOTS minutes anyways.
Concur that the biggest obstacle to this are hackers.
On August 20 2015 04:17 Sholip wrote: I see that having some time restriction is inevitable, but if the games are decided by more XP gathered, it would only be fair to at least display your XP in-game somewhere. That way you could have an idea if you are in a winning position should the timer expire soon.
That raises some problems though: -You would also need to see your opponent's XP in order in order for that number to mean anything. -This would invalidate certain strategies (hidden bases) when you see your 3 base XP score rising at the same rate as their perceived 2 base economy. -The emphasis might then transition to winning by XP rather than winning "legitimately". Builds would be developed to maximize XP by the 25 minute mark, rather than winning the game, which is not the focus.
I think using XP as the determining factor is kind of like in boxing/MMA, victory by decision. But as a fighter you want to win by KO... Perhaps this might not be the best analogy but yeah.
Eh... Looks kinda wrong to use XP as the determining factor, though it's indeed necessary to have a time limit in these. There's the risk to see a new meta emerging with players going for XP efficiency in their builds (though that could be fun to see it emerge, but not for long I fear).
On August 20 2015 04:17 Sholip wrote: I see that having some time restriction is inevitable, but if the games are decided by more XP gathered, it would only be fair to at least display your XP in-game somewhere. That way you could have an idea if you are in a winning position should the timer expire soon.
That raises some problems though: -You would also need to see your opponent's XP in order in order for that number to mean anything. -This would invalidate certain strategies (hidden bases) when you see your 3 base XP score rising at the same rate as their perceived 2 base economy. -The emphasis might then transition to winning by XP rather than winning "legitimately". Builds would be developed to maximize XP by the 25 minute mark, rather than winning the game, which is not the focus.
I think using XP as the determining factor is kind of like in boxing/MMA, victory by decision. But as a fighter you want to win by KO... Perhaps this might not be the best analogy but yeah.
A lot of fighters box to win on points (Mayweather, for example).
On August 20 2015 04:17 Sholip wrote: I see that having some time restriction is inevitable, but if the games are decided by more XP gathered, it would only be fair to at least display your XP in-game somewhere. That way you could have an idea if you are in a winning position should the timer expire soon.
That raises some problems though: -You would also need to see your opponent's XP in order in order for that number to mean anything. -This would invalidate certain strategies (hidden bases) when you see your 3 base XP score rising at the same rate as their perceived 2 base economy. -The emphasis might then transition to winning by XP rather than winning "legitimately". Builds would be developed to maximize XP by the 25 minute mark, rather than winning the game, which is not the focus.
I think using XP as the determining factor is kind of like in boxing/MMA, victory by decision. But as a fighter you want to win by KO... Perhaps this might not be the best analogy but yeah.
I don't think you should be able to see your opponent's XP, though, just as you don't see their tech, units, etc. But you could memorize how much XP you generally have at certain points in your games and compare that to your actual XP at any time. For example you know that you usually have 100,000 at 20:00 and you usually win with it. If you see that it's soon 20:00 and you only have 80,000, you will have to start thinking about doing something soon, else you risk loosing by XP.
I think this could be valuable information for you, and it would come as less of a surprise at the end of the game that, bamm, you lost (or won, for that matter).
On August 20 2015 04:17 Sholip wrote: I see that having some time restriction is inevitable, but if the games are decided by more XP gathered, it would only be fair to at least display your XP in-game somewhere. That way you could have an idea if you are in a winning position should the timer expire soon.
That raises some problems though: -You would also need to see your opponent's XP in order in order for that number to mean anything. -This would invalidate certain strategies (hidden bases) when you see your 3 base XP score rising at the same rate as their perceived 2 base economy. -The emphasis might then transition to winning by XP rather than winning "legitimately". Builds would be developed to maximize XP by the 25 minute mark, rather than winning the game, which is not the focus.
I think using XP as the determining factor is kind of like in boxing/MMA, victory by decision. But as a fighter you want to win by KO... Perhaps this might not be the best analogy but yeah.
I don't think you should be able to see your opponent's XP, though, just as you don't see their tech, units, etc. But you could memorize how much XP you generally have at certain points in your games and compare that to your actual XP at any time. For example you know that you usually have 100,000 at 20:00 and you usually win with it. If you see that it's soon 20:00 and you only have 80,000, you will have to start thinking about doing something soon, else you risk loosing by XP.
I think this could be valuable information for you, and it would come as less of a surprise at the end of the game that, bamm, you lost (or won, for that matter).
Why do you have to know your XP? You also don't know your opponent's unit count and still have to make predictions on his play. Getting a feel for your XP would plainly be another question of, well, experience. Not sure if worth training just for those tournaments though.
The question is of course if XP are balanced, which I think they are not 100% (I think Zerg has an advantage), but I don't know and I think the margin is small and the scenarios in which this will actually come down to a plain "race advantage" are rare.
Each match in a tournament is currently limited to 25 minutes. This would equate roughly to a 35-minute game in Heart of the Swarm due to the game-clock changes in Legacy of the Void. If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value. Experience is accrued throughout the game by earning money, constructing units, destroying units, etc.
Really dislike this. I can see so many people getting a loss for games they were going to win. Hope they find a better solution than exp points..
Each match in a tournament is currently limited to 25 minutes. This would equate roughly to a 35-minute game in Heart of the Swarm due to the game-clock changes in Legacy of the Void. If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value. Experience is accrued throughout the game by earning money, constructing units, destroying units, etc.
Really dislike this. I can see so many people getting a loss for games they were going to win. Hope they find a better solution than exp points..
It seems like this would be a rare issue, 35m is quite long anyway.
Each match in a tournament is currently limited to 25 minutes. This would equate roughly to a 35-minute game in Heart of the Swarm due to the game-clock changes in Legacy of the Void. If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value. Experience is accrued throughout the game by earning money, constructing units, destroying units, etc.
Really dislike this. I can see so many people getting a loss for games they were going to win. Hope they find a better solution than exp points..
Do you pay attention to scores? How often are you up in points and lose? I know people will always figure out a way to work the system, but the reality is for the most part, the person who is going to win has the most points. And if you notice someone is trying to just turtle up and win then you can do the same thing and at that point it almost becomes a coin toss.
The time limit is needed. I don't want to enter a tournament and then have to wait an hour to play the next game because two players are sitting around doing nothing, or even worse both just leave for some reason. I'm sure when they picked the time limit they had data to look at the average length of a game which is probably in the 10-20 minute range and then added a few minutes to that so essentially only a higher sliver of games will end up in a draw anyway. I can say so far playing Beta with all the new units and ways to make things happen having games go longer than 25 minutes isn't very common.
Each match in a tournament is currently limited to 25 minutes. This would equate roughly to a 35-minute game in Heart of the Swarm due to the game-clock changes in Legacy of the Void. If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value. Experience is accrued throughout the game by earning money, constructing units, destroying units, etc.
Really dislike this. I can see so many people getting a loss for games they were going to win. Hope they find a better solution than exp points..
I would think (hope) that having an advantage is also reflected in XP. Either more resources mined or spent or more units killed... That said, I don't even know how XP is calculated, and as far as I know it is not entirely public, either. If your XP is not displayed in-game, it would be nice to at least know how it is calculated.
If you host custom games on the LotV beta you can set a time limit. It shows you who has more XP when the time limit is getting close. So anyone theory-crafting if this will give people injust wins can test it out and see how well it works.
OMG I always thought that all the hype about this Automated Tournaments thing was about doing tournaments with your friends, not random people... I'm so out of the LotV loop!
Each match in a tournament is currently limited to 25 minutes. This would equate roughly to a 35-minute game in Heart of the Swarm due to the game-clock changes in Legacy of the Void. If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value. Experience is accrued throughout the game by earning money, constructing units, destroying units, etc.
Really dislike this. I can see so many people getting a loss for games they were going to win. Hope they find a better solution than exp points..
Do you pay attention to scores? How often are you up in points and lose? I know people will always figure out a way to work the system, but the reality is for the most part, the person who is going to win has the most points. And if you notice someone is trying to just turtle up and win then you can do the same thing and at that point it almost becomes a coin toss.
The time limit is needed. I don't want to enter a tournament and then have to wait an hour to play the next game because two players are sitting around doing nothing, or even worse both just leave for some reason. I'm sure when they picked the time limit they had data to look at the average length of a game which is probably in the 10-20 minute range and then added a few minutes to that so essentially only a higher sliver of games will end up in a draw anyway. I can say so far playing Beta with all the new units and ways to make things happen having games go longer than 25 minutes isn't very common.
I don't know how the WC3 system worked but I don't remember having to wait too long. Granted, that was over 12 or 13 years ago.
Each match in a tournament is currently limited to 25 minutes. This would equate roughly to a 35-minute game in Heart of the Swarm due to the game-clock changes in Legacy of the Void. If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value. Experience is accrued throughout the game by earning money, constructing units, destroying units, etc.
Really dislike this. I can see so many people getting a loss for games they were going to win. Hope they find a better solution than exp points..
What would be your recommended solution to guys laming it out?
Drawing from other competitions that are time/points based (boxing/mma) I don't see a problem with the 25 (real) minute cap and games being decided on experience points. It just becomes another thing to factor into your strategy.
Overall super excited about this!
...
I wonder what they'll do to allow these to be obs/streamed?...
Very good news. So eager to test that, though there are going to be huge discrepancies, for instance low masters is miles away from actually good masters (being a low masters myself, I know what I'm talking about lol).
Sexy! Maybe (and this will only be a reality if and when we get better ways to deal with hackers) at some point monetize it with Blizz taking a small rake? I'm thinking something like each player puts in X units of currency, 1st place gets 12X, 2nd place gets 3X, and Blizz takes an X for profit. Half those values for an 8-player tournament.
On August 20 2015 06:03 [PkF] Wire wrote: Very good news. So eager to test that, though there are going to be huge discrepancies, for instance low masters is miles away from actually good masters (being a low masters myself, I know what I'm talking about lol).
Please, please, please sell me some skins for christ's sake. Then we could wager them in the tournaments. I have spent $100s on DotA stuff for my nephew and I don't even play the game - don't you want some of that cash?
On August 20 2015 06:03 [PkF] Wire wrote: Very good news. So eager to test that, though there are going to be huge discrepancies, for instance low masters is miles away from actually good masters (being a low masters myself, I know what I'm talking about lol).
Honestly, I'd rather have an option for ladder to set BoX when searching.
I play a lot of SC2, but doing an entire tournament seems daunting. I do think playing Bo3 or even Bo5 against ladder opponents would be neat. Arguably, I should scout better or what not, but playing a truly random player (as I am not at the top of the ladder, I rarely ever play the same person twice), means that we both go into the game with random build orders in mind. When we're both mid-tier players, this means the game is effectively won/lost by random chance as to who you got matched up against and if your build order just happens to be better. Playing a Bo3 or Bo5 adds a bit more stability into the mix.
Obviously, what I say isn't necessarily applicable to the top players, as they aren't matched evenly from the beginning, but when you're in the middle of the pack and you go in roughly even with your opponent, the build orders are often times too much to overcome.
On August 20 2015 08:15 UberNuB wrote: Honestly, I'd rather have an option for ladder to set BoX when searching.
I play a lot of SC2, but doing an entire tournament seems daunting. I do think playing Bo3 or even Bo5 against ladder opponents would be neat. Arguably, I should scout better or what not, but playing a truly random player (as I am not at the top of the ladder, I rarely ever play the same person twice), means that we both go into the game with random build orders in mind. When we're both mid-tier players, this means the game is effectively won/lost by random chance as to who you got matched up against and if your build order just happens to be better. Playing a Bo3 or Bo5 adds a bit more stability into the mix.
Obviously, what I say isn't necessarily applicable to the top players, as they aren't matched evenly from the beginning, but when you're in the middle of the pack and you go in roughly even with your opponent, the build orders are often times too much to overcome.
Well you can always you know, just not play in the tournaments.
On August 20 2015 08:15 UberNuB wrote: Honestly, I'd rather have an option for ladder to set BoX when searching.
I play a lot of SC2, but doing an entire tournament seems daunting. I do think playing Bo3 or even Bo5 against ladder opponents would be neat. Arguably, I should scout better or what not, but playing a truly random player (as I am not at the top of the ladder, I rarely ever play the same person twice), means that we both go into the game with random build orders in mind. When we're both mid-tier players, this means the game is effectively won/lost by random chance as to who you got matched up against and if your build order just happens to be better. Playing a Bo3 or Bo5 adds a bit more stability into the mix.
Obviously, what I say isn't necessarily applicable to the top players, as they aren't matched evenly from the beginning, but when you're in the middle of the pack and you go in roughly even with your opponent, the build orders are often times too much to overcome.
an option to bo3 ladder would be cool yea. But why not just play them in customs afterwards? Most of the time opponents are happy to play again, especially if you aren't too bad mannered, at least in my experience.
The 25 minute limit idea gave me two thoughts. The first:
Man, this going to be shitty for games that end up being longer...
Then my instant second thought was...
How can I use this to my advantage?
It's almost a blessing and a curse for starcraft. On one hand people are going to do some weird ass shit we've never seen before in order ot have an advantage either turtely or hyper agressive. On the other hand, long starcraft games can be enjoyable with even more crazy shit. I'm torn.
On August 20 2015 09:31 hoby2000 wrote: The 25 minute limit idea gave me two thoughts. The first:
Man, this going to be shitty for games that end up being longer...
Then my instant second thought was...
How can I use this to my advantage?
It's almost a blessing and a curse for starcraft. On one hand people are going to do some weird ass shit we've never seen before in order ot have an advantage either turtely or hyper agressive. On the other hand, long starcraft games can be enjoyable with even more crazy shit. I'm torn.
I'll try it out though.
Don't forget that 25 minutes of game time in LotV will be a very different game than 35 now.
It will be interesting to see if any strategies develop from this though.
Tbh most games are finished before 25 minutes. The problem I see is that a lategame that still is winnable for both sides and fairly even will be decided by that one side happenend to have 100 more exp..
Leagues. Why are they still here? Why are they associated with the tournament system? Why isn't this inaccurate and non-credible league system being replaced in LotV?
While the idea of using MMR for tournament matchmaking makes a lot of sense allowing everyone a chance at winning, more specifically you have a 1/16 chance of being randomly put in a group where you have the best performance, it risks becoming as meaningless as divisions. Congrats, you're the best out of 16 (or 100 in the case of divisions) arbitrary players. You could be the best because you played really well, or you could be the best due to the RNG putting you into a group where you have the most skill out of the 16 randomly chosen players.
Again, it's a good idea to have this mode that allows everyone a chance of winning. But it should also be supplemented with a WC3-style tournament system, where there is a 3.5 hour open queue phase, where anyone can face anyone, and then the top 16 with the highest levels (or points) in the tournament moves onto a 16 player bracket phase.
For a diamond player like me, there's finally something else to play for than ladder points ! I hope we get bo3/bo5 series as well, so it's worth it to train different builds and adapt to your opponent and it's not just another set of bo1. Still, I'm incredibly hyped for that !! It's gonna be awesome !
As for the details of how they implemented it, I'm trusting Blizz. They probably have a reason as to why they did it like that, and if their implementation has major flaws they'll change/adjust things.
On August 20 2015 15:31 shin_toss wrote: 25 mins is short.. i got a lot of 30min games.. tho i think a good side to this is force players to get action for points
25 minute game in lotv is different than 25 minute game in hots
Unfortunatly i wont have time to play 90 minutes during the week, and 4 hours the week end is not better... But any way if i ever find some time i'll try, sounds like fun.
25 min might be to low though, maybe 35 is better. It should ensure the tournament runs relatively smoothly but without making players feel time pressured when playing.
On August 20 2015 05:24 Silvana wrote: OMG I always thought that all the hype about this Automated Tournaments thing was about doing tournaments with your friends, not random people... I'm so out of the LotV loop!
That is actually a very good point! Could be nice to be able to join a tournament as a group. Sure one could argue that this would allow for too much communication / tips and so on, but I'd rather see the bright side!
On August 20 2015 17:13 swag_bro wrote: This game is fun as is. Why ruin it by adding tournaments where hackers win? All the finals are probably gonna be hacker vs hacker.
If that really become the case, then it would be easy to have automated ban list!
Indeed, the potential of joining a tournament with friends should be taken into account by Blizzard. The only problem I see with that is the "level pairing" if you and your friends have a significant level difference: do you make the whole group join a tournament at level of their worst player, best player or an hypothetical group average ?
My personnal position is to have the group join the tournament at the level of their best player. This will avoid having master players in the lower level tournaments. The only downside of it could be that some of the master players in the tournament would face a lower level player in their first round, thus effectively having a "free win" in the first round. But I think this would be better than having master players farming the bronze to dia tournaments.
On August 20 2015 17:02 Sapphire.lux wrote: 25 min might be to low though, maybe 35 is better. It should ensure the tournament runs relatively smoothly but without making players feel time pressured when playing.
Yeah, but that is something that can be changed if it becomes a problem.
Each match in a tournament is currently limited to 25 minutes. This would equate roughly to a 35-minute game in Heart of the Swarm due to the game-clock changes in Legacy of the Void. If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value. Experience is accrued throughout the game by earning money, constructing units, destroying units, etc.
Really dislike this. I can see so many people getting a loss for games they were going to win. Hope they find a better solution than exp points..
Do you pay attention to scores? How often are you up in points and lose? I know people will always figure out a way to work the system, but the reality is for the most part, the person who is going to win has the most points. And if you notice someone is trying to just turtle up and win then you can do the same thing and at that point it almost becomes a coin toss.
The time limit is needed. I don't want to enter a tournament and then have to wait an hour to play the next game because two players are sitting around doing nothing, or even worse both just leave for some reason. I'm sure when they picked the time limit they had data to look at the average length of a game which is probably in the 10-20 minute range and then added a few minutes to that so essentially only a higher sliver of games will end up in a draw anyway. I can say so far playing Beta with all the new units and ways to make things happen having games go longer than 25 minutes isn't very common.
I don't know how the WC3 system worked but I don't remember having to wait too long. Granted, that was over 12 or 13 years ago.
WC3 Tournament games ended after 30 ingame minutes and were then determined by game score. I felt that system worked quite well and the tournaments ran very smoothly. So I'm looking forward for LotV tournaments.
On August 20 2015 17:40 LoneYoShi wrote: Indeed, the potential of joining a tournament with friends should be taken into account by Blizzard. The only problem I see with that is the "level pairing" if you and your friends have a significant level difference: do you make the whole group join a tournament at level of their worst player, best player or an hypothetical group average ?
My personnal position is to have the group join the tournament at the level of their best player. This will avoid having master players in the lower level tournaments. The only downside of it could be that some of the master players in the tournament would face a lower level player in their first round, thus effectively having a "free win" in the first round. But I think this would be better than having master players farming the bronze to dia tournaments.
I'm gonna quote myself to expand even further on that idea: Now that Blizz' is considering adding automated tournaments, it would be nice to have the possibility to organize your own tournaments with friends. Imagine being able to easily organise a in-clan tournament ? Or just a small tournament with 3 friends, without requiring other tools than the game itelf (binary beast for bracket, skype for vetos, etc) ? That would be sick. And since Blizz' has all the UI and functionalities designed for automated tournaments, I don't think it would be too much work.
On August 20 2015 14:56 paralleluniverse wrote: The last 3 screenshots are extremely troubling.
Leagues. Why are they still here? Why are they associated with the tournament system? Why isn't this inaccurate and non-credible league system being replaced in LotV?
While the idea of using MMR for tournament matchmaking makes a lot of sense allowing everyone a chance at winning, more specifically you have a 1/16 chance of being randomly put in a group where you have the best performance, it risks becoming as meaningless as divisions. Congrats, you're the best out of 16 (or 100 in the case of divisions) arbitrary players. You could be the best because you played really well, or you could be the best due to the RNG putting you into a group where you have the most skill out of the 16 randomly chosen players.
Again, it's a good idea to have this mode that allows everyone a chance of winning. But it should also be supplemented with a WC3-style tournament system, where there is a 3.5 hour open queue phase, where anyone can face anyone, and then the top 16 with the highest levels (or points) in the tournament moves onto a 16 player bracket phase.
yeah you needed at least 6-1 in your record to advance to the next stage, i dont know if it was round or 16 though. There were also Random vs Random or mirror tournaments, super fun!
On August 20 2015 17:40 LoneYoShi wrote: Indeed, the potential of joining a tournament with friends should be taken into account by Blizzard. The only problem I see with that is the "level pairing" if you and your friends have a significant level difference: do you make the whole group join a tournament at level of their worst player, best player or an hypothetical group average ?
My personnal position is to have the group join the tournament at the level of their best player. This will avoid having master players in the lower level tournaments. The only downside of it could be that some of the master players in the tournament would face a lower level player in their first round, thus effectively having a "free win" in the first round. But I think this would be better than having master players farming the bronze to dia tournaments.
I'm gonna quote myself to expand even further on that idea: Now that Blizz' is considering adding automated tournaments, it would be nice to have the possibility to organize your own tournaments with friends. Imagine being able to easily organise a in-clan tournament ? Or just a small tournament with 3 friends, without requiring other tools than the game itelf (binary beast for bracket, skype for vetos, etc) ? That would be sick. And since Blizz' has all the UI and functionalities designed for automated tournaments, I don't think it would be too much work.
This is what I meant, closed/private tournaments. Not joining a random tournament in mass. I wonder if it would be too much extra work to add this, and different types of tournaments or flexible settings to pick from :D
On August 20 2015 17:40 LoneYoShi wrote: Indeed, the potential of joining a tournament with friends should be taken into account by Blizzard. The only problem I see with that is the "level pairing" if you and your friends have a significant level difference: do you make the whole group join a tournament at level of their worst player, best player or an hypothetical group average ?
My personnal position is to have the group join the tournament at the level of their best player. This will avoid having master players in the lower level tournaments. The only downside of it could be that some of the master players in the tournament would face a lower level player in their first round, thus effectively having a "free win" in the first round. But I think this would be better than having master players farming the bronze to dia tournaments.
I'm gonna quote myself to expand even further on that idea: Now that Blizz' is considering adding automated tournaments, it would be nice to have the possibility to organize your own tournaments with friends. Imagine being able to easily organise a in-clan tournament ? Or just a small tournament with 3 friends, without requiring other tools than the game itelf (binary beast for bracket, skype for vetos, etc) ? That would be sick. And since Blizz' has all the UI and functionalities designed for automated tournaments, I don't think it would be too much work.
This is what I meant, closed/private tournaments. Not joining a random tournament in mass. I wonder if it would be too much extra work to add this, and different types of tournaments or flexible settings to pick from :D
I like the idea of open tournaments with stranger as it gives you another way to enjoy sc2 than just random bo1 (ladder). But I also agree with you that it would be extra nice to have the opportunity to create tournaments with friends as well. Since Blizz' already designed all the UI and the tournament system, I don't think it would be too much extra work.
In their message, they say they're still open to suggestions. Let's hope they see this ! Some kind of in-clan tournament could be good as well.
On August 21 2015 05:32 Draconicfire wrote: Wait so you are put into a random tournament? You can't make your own with your friends? I feel like that's an option should be there.
On August 21 2015 05:32 Draconicfire wrote: Wait so you are put into a random tournament? You can't make your own with your friends? I feel like that's an option should be there.
Isn't that called "Custom Games"
I guess being able to use the in game interface for setting brackets up would be cool, but it doesn't seem like a needed thing.
One of the funnest parts of the wc3 tournaments, sadistic as it is, was the mixing of all the different MMRs... getting a chance to crush noobs in that setting was very fulfilling. Then again I was on the winning end, don't know how it felt for them - maybe a chance to match up against the whole community and a better player was entertaining or exciting, I can't tell you. Something about server wide tournament is exciting though. Maybe it's just the size - so many people entering, only a few exit...
This is pretty bloody exciting ! LotV is looking sexy :D (Except for the macro mechanics thing, still withholding my judgement on that one; it seems dumb on first glance)
Each match in a tournament is currently limited to 25 minutes. This would equate roughly to a 35-minute game in Heart of the Swarm due to the game-clock changes in Legacy of the Void. If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value. Experience is accrued throughout the game by earning money, constructing units, destroying units, etc.
Really dislike this. I can see so many people getting a loss for games they were going to win. Hope they find a better solution than exp points..
Do you pay attention to scores? How often are you up in points and lose? I know people will always figure out a way to work the system, but the reality is for the most part, the person who is going to win has the most points. And if you notice someone is trying to just turtle up and win then you can do the same thing and at that point it almost becomes a coin toss.
The time limit is needed. I don't want to enter a tournament and then have to wait an hour to play the next game because two players are sitting around doing nothing, or even worse both just leave for some reason. I'm sure when they picked the time limit they had data to look at the average length of a game which is probably in the 10-20 minute range and then added a few minutes to that so essentially only a higher sliver of games will end up in a draw anyway. I can say so far playing Beta with all the new units and ways to make things happen having games go longer than 25 minutes isn't very common.
I don't know how the WC3 system worked but I don't remember having to wait too long. Granted, that was over 12 or 13 years ago.
The War3 system actually functioned very similarly to Hearthstone's Arena system, at least for matchmaking in the prelim phase. It's a Schenkel system (variant of the Swiss-style format) where you play against opponents of identical record for that tournament over a 3-hour period. You could play as many games as you wanted, up to a max of 8. Wins gave you 3 points, losses -1, and ties 1 (the game could not be completed within the time limit). After the prelim phase ended, the top 16 players by points would advance to the finals.
The finals had a standard knockout bracket with each round starting and ending at a fixed time.
It was pretty fun. Of course, since it wasn't subdivided by skill level, you could utterly stomp one opponent and then get stomped in the very next game. You could be a low-MMR guy who happened to beat a lower-MMR guy, then get matched against a high-MMR guy the next game. This is one thing that bracketing out tournaments by league will directly address, and it's actually a very smart move to integrate an existing system. paralleluniverse is getting bogged down in the fact that the tournaments will use meaningless league icons, but they don't have to tie the brackets to the icons themselves, just the rating ranges that correspond to those leagues. Mismatches will still happen if a player is higher or lower than they should be, but it's going to happen much less often than War3's method.
Each match in a tournament is currently limited to 25 minutes. This would equate roughly to a 35-minute game in Heart of the Swarm due to the game-clock changes in Legacy of the Void. If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value. Experience is accrued throughout the game by earning money, constructing units, destroying units, etc.
Really dislike this. I can see so many people getting a loss for games they were going to win. Hope they find a better solution than exp points..
Do you pay attention to scores? How often are you up in points and lose? I know people will always figure out a way to work the system, but the reality is for the most part, the person who is going to win has the most points. And if you notice someone is trying to just turtle up and win then you can do the same thing and at that point it almost becomes a coin toss.
The time limit is needed. I don't want to enter a tournament and then have to wait an hour to play the next game because two players are sitting around doing nothing, or even worse both just leave for some reason. I'm sure when they picked the time limit they had data to look at the average length of a game which is probably in the 10-20 minute range and then added a few minutes to that so essentially only a higher sliver of games will end up in a draw anyway. I can say so far playing Beta with all the new units and ways to make things happen having games go longer than 25 minutes isn't very common.
I don't know how the WC3 system worked but I don't remember having to wait too long. Granted, that was over 12 or 13 years ago.
The War3 system actually functioned very similarly to Hearthstone's Arena system, at least for matchmaking in the prelim phase. It's a Schenkel system (variant of the Swiss-style format) where you play against opponents of identical record for that tournament over a 3-hour period. You could play as many games as you wanted, up to a max of 8. Wins gave you 3 points, losses -1, and ties 1 (the game could not be completed within the time limit). After the prelim phase ended, the top 16 players by points would advance to the finals.
The finals had a standard knockout bracket with each round starting and ending at a fixed time.
It was pretty fun. Of course, since it wasn't subdivided by skill level, you could utterly stomp one opponent and then get stomped in the very next game. You could be a low-MMR guy who happened to beat a lower-MMR guy, then get matched against a high-MMR guy the next game. This is one thing that bracketing out tournaments by league will directly address, and it's actually a very smart move to integrate an existing system. paralleluniverse is getting bogged down in the fact that the tournaments will use meaningless league icons, but they don't have to tie the brackets to the icons themselves, just the rating ranges that correspond to those leagues. Mismatches will still happen if a player is higher or lower than they should be, but it's going to happen much less often than War3's method.
I have no problem with bracketing out tournaments by MMR (but not by league).
In fact, I praised it as a good innovation for allowing everyone a chance of winning.
You say that the league brackets in tournaments could just mean that Blizzard is using the MMR range associated with the league. Maybe, or maybe not. If it's true, then calling it a "Platinum" tournament is just misleading because not everyone in the tournament is platinum. You often get matched with players outside of your league (which is one clue that they're just wrong), so there's no reason to assume tournament matchmaking won't also match outside of leagues. If it's not true, i.e. a "Platinum" tournament only has platinum players, then why doesn't also ordinary matchmaking enforce this strange rule?
I'm just saying there should be a 3rd tournament format that doesn't group by MMR or leagues. It doesn't have to follow the details of WC3 tournament matchmaking exactly, just the principle that anyone can be matched with anyone (bracketing by MMR won't be as accurate as not, when you have to find the best player in only 5 or 6 games).
Each match in a tournament is currently limited to 25 minutes. This would equate roughly to a 35-minute game in Heart of the Swarm due to the game-clock changes in Legacy of the Void. If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value. Experience is accrued throughout the game by earning money, constructing units, destroying units, etc.
Really dislike this. I can see so many people getting a loss for games they were going to win. Hope they find a better solution than exp points..
Do you pay attention to scores? How often are you up in points and lose? I know people will always figure out a way to work the system, but the reality is for the most part, the person who is going to win has the most points. And if you notice someone is trying to just turtle up and win then you can do the same thing and at that point it almost becomes a coin toss.
The time limit is needed. I don't want to enter a tournament and then have to wait an hour to play the next game because two players are sitting around doing nothing, or even worse both just leave for some reason. I'm sure when they picked the time limit they had data to look at the average length of a game which is probably in the 10-20 minute range and then added a few minutes to that so essentially only a higher sliver of games will end up in a draw anyway. I can say so far playing Beta with all the new units and ways to make things happen having games go longer than 25 minutes isn't very common.
I don't know how the WC3 system worked but I don't remember having to wait too long. Granted, that was over 12 or 13 years ago.
The War3 system actually functioned very similarly to Hearthstone's Arena system, at least for matchmaking in the prelim phase. It's a Schenkel system (variant of the Swiss-style format) where you play against opponents of identical record for that tournament over a 3-hour period. You could play as many games as you wanted, up to a max of 8. Wins gave you 3 points, losses -1, and ties 1 (the game could not be completed within the time limit). After the prelim phase ended, the top 16 players by points would advance to the finals.
The finals had a standard knockout bracket with each round starting and ending at a fixed time.
It was pretty fun. Of course, since it wasn't subdivided by skill level, you could utterly stomp one opponent and then get stomped in the very next game. You could be a low-MMR guy who happened to beat a lower-MMR guy, then get matched against a high-MMR guy the next game. This is one thing that bracketing out tournaments by league will directly address, and it's actually a very smart move to integrate an existing system. paralleluniverse is getting bogged down in the fact that the tournaments will use meaningless league icons, but they don't have to tie the brackets to the icons themselves, just the rating ranges that correspond to those leagues. Mismatches will still happen if a player is higher or lower than they should be, but it's going to happen much less often than War3's method.
I have no problem with bracketing out tournaments by MMR (but not by league).
In fact, I praised it as a good innovation for allowing everyone a chance of winning.
You say that the league brackets in tournaments could just mean that Blizzard is using the MMR range associated with the league. Maybe, or maybe not. If it's true, then calling it a "Platinum" tournament is just misleading because not everyone in the tournament is platinum. You often get matched with players outside of your league (which is one clue that they're just wrong), so there's no reason to assume tournament matchmaking won't also match outside of leagues. If it's not true, i.e. a "Platinum" tournament only has platinum players, then why doesn't also ordinary matchmaking enforce this strange rule?
I'm just saying there should be a 3rd tournament format that doesn't group by MMR or leagues. It doesn't have to follow the details of WC3 tournament matchmaking exactly, just the principle that anyone can be matched with anyone (bracketing by MMR won't be as accurate as not, when you have to find the best player in only 5 or 6 games).
It does say "Platinum Level" which suggests to me "in or around Platinum" and by extension the rating range spanning Platinum. If it simply said "1v1 Platinum" it would be a lot more ambiguous to me. I do wonder though if you can enter a Platinum Level tournament if your rating has fallen to Gold or Silver but you retain the Platinum icon...
Each match in a tournament is currently limited to 25 minutes. This would equate roughly to a 35-minute game in Heart of the Swarm due to the game-clock changes in Legacy of the Void. If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value. Experience is accrued throughout the game by earning money, constructing units, destroying units, etc.
Really dislike this. I can see so many people getting a loss for games they were going to win. Hope they find a better solution than exp points..
Do you pay attention to scores? How often are you up in points and lose? I know people will always figure out a way to work the system, but the reality is for the most part, the person who is going to win has the most points. And if you notice someone is trying to just turtle up and win then you can do the same thing and at that point it almost becomes a coin toss.
The time limit is needed. I don't want to enter a tournament and then have to wait an hour to play the next game because two players are sitting around doing nothing, or even worse both just leave for some reason. I'm sure when they picked the time limit they had data to look at the average length of a game which is probably in the 10-20 minute range and then added a few minutes to that so essentially only a higher sliver of games will end up in a draw anyway. I can say so far playing Beta with all the new units and ways to make things happen having games go longer than 25 minutes isn't very common.
I don't know how the WC3 system worked but I don't remember having to wait too long. Granted, that was over 12 or 13 years ago.
The War3 system actually functioned very similarly to Hearthstone's Arena system, at least for matchmaking in the prelim phase. It's a Schenkel system (variant of the Swiss-style format) where you play against opponents of identical record for that tournament over a 3-hour period. You could play as many games as you wanted, up to a max of 8. Wins gave you 3 points, losses -1, and ties 1 (the game could not be completed within the time limit). After the prelim phase ended, the top 16 players by points would advance to the finals.
The finals had a standard knockout bracket with each round starting and ending at a fixed time.
It was pretty fun. Of course, since it wasn't subdivided by skill level, you could utterly stomp one opponent and then get stomped in the very next game. You could be a low-MMR guy who happened to beat a lower-MMR guy, then get matched against a high-MMR guy the next game. This is one thing that bracketing out tournaments by league will directly address, and it's actually a very smart move to integrate an existing system. paralleluniverse is getting bogged down in the fact that the tournaments will use meaningless league icons, but they don't have to tie the brackets to the icons themselves, just the rating ranges that correspond to those leagues. Mismatches will still happen if a player is higher or lower than they should be, but it's going to happen much less often than War3's method.
I have no problem with bracketing out tournaments by MMR (but not by league).
In fact, I praised it as a good innovation for allowing everyone a chance of winning.
You say that the league brackets in tournaments could just mean that Blizzard is using the MMR range associated with the league. Maybe, or maybe not. If it's true, then calling it a "Platinum" tournament is just misleading because not everyone in the tournament is platinum. You often get matched with players outside of your league (which is one clue that they're just wrong), so there's no reason to assume tournament matchmaking won't also match outside of leagues. If it's not true, i.e. a "Platinum" tournament only has platinum players, then why doesn't also ordinary matchmaking enforce this strange rule?
I'm just saying there should be a 3rd tournament format that doesn't group by MMR or leagues. It doesn't have to follow the details of WC3 tournament matchmaking exactly, just the principle that anyone can be matched with anyone (bracketing by MMR won't be as accurate as not, when you have to find the best player in only 5 or 6 games).
It does say "Platinum Level" which suggests to me "in or around Platinum" and by extension the rating range spanning Platinum. If it simply said "1v1 Platinum" it would be a lot more ambiguous to me. I do wonder though if you can enter a Platinum Level tournament if your rating has fallen to Gold or Silver but you retain the Platinum icon...
Just tested this. I'm in Bronze league, but got put in a Gold league tournament. There are players in Bronze, Silver and Gold.
So the league of the tournament is just as dodgy as the league of the players.
Each match in a tournament is currently limited to 25 minutes. This would equate roughly to a 35-minute game in Heart of the Swarm due to the game-clock changes in Legacy of the Void. If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value. Experience is accrued throughout the game by earning money, constructing units, destroying units, etc.
Really dislike this. I can see so many people getting a loss for games they were going to win. Hope they find a better solution than exp points..
Do you pay attention to scores? How often are you up in points and lose? I know people will always figure out a way to work the system, but the reality is for the most part, the person who is going to win has the most points. And if you notice someone is trying to just turtle up and win then you can do the same thing and at that point it almost becomes a coin toss.
The time limit is needed. I don't want to enter a tournament and then have to wait an hour to play the next game because two players are sitting around doing nothing, or even worse both just leave for some reason. I'm sure when they picked the time limit they had data to look at the average length of a game which is probably in the 10-20 minute range and then added a few minutes to that so essentially only a higher sliver of games will end up in a draw anyway. I can say so far playing Beta with all the new units and ways to make things happen having games go longer than 25 minutes isn't very common.
I don't know how the WC3 system worked but I don't remember having to wait too long. Granted, that was over 12 or 13 years ago.
The War3 system actually functioned very similarly to Hearthstone's Arena system, at least for matchmaking in the prelim phase. It's a Schenkel system (variant of the Swiss-style format) where you play against opponents of identical record for that tournament over a 3-hour period. You could play as many games as you wanted, up to a max of 8. Wins gave you 3 points, losses -1, and ties 1 (the game could not be completed within the time limit). After the prelim phase ended, the top 16 players by points would advance to the finals.
The finals had a standard knockout bracket with each round starting and ending at a fixed time.
It was pretty fun. Of course, since it wasn't subdivided by skill level, you could utterly stomp one opponent and then get stomped in the very next game. You could be a low-MMR guy who happened to beat a lower-MMR guy, then get matched against a high-MMR guy the next game. This is one thing that bracketing out tournaments by league will directly address, and it's actually a very smart move to integrate an existing system. paralleluniverse is getting bogged down in the fact that the tournaments will use meaningless league icons, but they don't have to tie the brackets to the icons themselves, just the rating ranges that correspond to those leagues. Mismatches will still happen if a player is higher or lower than they should be, but it's going to happen much less often than War3's method.
I have no problem with bracketing out tournaments by MMR (but not by league).
In fact, I praised it as a good innovation for allowing everyone a chance of winning.
You say that the league brackets in tournaments could just mean that Blizzard is using the MMR range associated with the league. Maybe, or maybe not. If it's true, then calling it a "Platinum" tournament is just misleading because not everyone in the tournament is platinum. You often get matched with players outside of your league (which is one clue that they're just wrong), so there's no reason to assume tournament matchmaking won't also match outside of leagues. If it's not true, i.e. a "Platinum" tournament only has platinum players, then why doesn't also ordinary matchmaking enforce this strange rule?
I'm just saying there should be a 3rd tournament format that doesn't group by MMR or leagues. It doesn't have to follow the details of WC3 tournament matchmaking exactly, just the principle that anyone can be matched with anyone (bracketing by MMR won't be as accurate as not, when you have to find the best player in only 5 or 6 games).
It does say "Platinum Level" which suggests to me "in or around Platinum" and by extension the rating range spanning Platinum. If it simply said "1v1 Platinum" it would be a lot more ambiguous to me. I do wonder though if you can enter a Platinum Level tournament if your rating has fallen to Gold or Silver but you retain the Platinum icon...
Just tested this. I'm in Bronze league, but got put in a Gold league tournament. There are players in Bronze, Silver and Gold.
So the league of the tournament is just as dodgy as the league of the players.
I"d assume the players are matched my MMR, not by league. Which means that there can be players in gold, silver and bronze, all with similar MMR, but that isn't really news I think?
Each match in a tournament is currently limited to 25 minutes. This would equate roughly to a 35-minute game in Heart of the Swarm due to the game-clock changes in Legacy of the Void. If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value. Experience is accrued throughout the game by earning money, constructing units, destroying units, etc.
Really dislike this. I can see so many people getting a loss for games they were going to win. Hope they find a better solution than exp points..
Do you pay attention to scores? How often are you up in points and lose? I know people will always figure out a way to work the system, but the reality is for the most part, the person who is going to win has the most points. And if you notice someone is trying to just turtle up and win then you can do the same thing and at that point it almost becomes a coin toss.
The time limit is needed. I don't want to enter a tournament and then have to wait an hour to play the next game because two players are sitting around doing nothing, or even worse both just leave for some reason. I'm sure when they picked the time limit they had data to look at the average length of a game which is probably in the 10-20 minute range and then added a few minutes to that so essentially only a higher sliver of games will end up in a draw anyway. I can say so far playing Beta with all the new units and ways to make things happen having games go longer than 25 minutes isn't very common.
I don't know how the WC3 system worked but I don't remember having to wait too long. Granted, that was over 12 or 13 years ago.
The War3 system actually functioned very similarly to Hearthstone's Arena system, at least for matchmaking in the prelim phase. It's a Schenkel system (variant of the Swiss-style format) where you play against opponents of identical record for that tournament over a 3-hour period. You could play as many games as you wanted, up to a max of 8. Wins gave you 3 points, losses -1, and ties 1 (the game could not be completed within the time limit). After the prelim phase ended, the top 16 players by points would advance to the finals.
The finals had a standard knockout bracket with each round starting and ending at a fixed time.
It was pretty fun. Of course, since it wasn't subdivided by skill level, you could utterly stomp one opponent and then get stomped in the very next game. You could be a low-MMR guy who happened to beat a lower-MMR guy, then get matched against a high-MMR guy the next game. This is one thing that bracketing out tournaments by league will directly address, and it's actually a very smart move to integrate an existing system. paralleluniverse is getting bogged down in the fact that the tournaments will use meaningless league icons, but they don't have to tie the brackets to the icons themselves, just the rating ranges that correspond to those leagues. Mismatches will still happen if a player is higher or lower than they should be, but it's going to happen much less often than War3's method.
I have no problem with bracketing out tournaments by MMR (but not by league).
In fact, I praised it as a good innovation for allowing everyone a chance of winning.
You say that the league brackets in tournaments could just mean that Blizzard is using the MMR range associated with the league. Maybe, or maybe not. If it's true, then calling it a "Platinum" tournament is just misleading because not everyone in the tournament is platinum. You often get matched with players outside of your league (which is one clue that they're just wrong), so there's no reason to assume tournament matchmaking won't also match outside of leagues. If it's not true, i.e. a "Platinum" tournament only has platinum players, then why doesn't also ordinary matchmaking enforce this strange rule?
I'm just saying there should be a 3rd tournament format that doesn't group by MMR or leagues. It doesn't have to follow the details of WC3 tournament matchmaking exactly, just the principle that anyone can be matched with anyone (bracketing by MMR won't be as accurate as not, when you have to find the best player in only 5 or 6 games).
It does say "Platinum Level" which suggests to me "in or around Platinum" and by extension the rating range spanning Platinum. If it simply said "1v1 Platinum" it would be a lot more ambiguous to me. I do wonder though if you can enter a Platinum Level tournament if your rating has fallen to Gold or Silver but you retain the Platinum icon...
Just tested this. I'm in Bronze league, but got put in a Gold league tournament. There are players in Bronze, Silver and Gold.
So the league of the tournament is just as dodgy as the league of the players.
I"d assume the players are matched my MMR, not by league. Which means that there can be players in gold, silver and bronze, all with similar MMR, but that isn't really news I think?
I just got promoted to Silver after my 2nd tournament game. Not Gold yet, so I don't think I have Gold MMR, but I'm still in a Gold tournament. It seems the Gold MMR criteria for being a Gold tournament is likely approximate.
If it were true that Gold tournaments = Gold MMR, then that would be a useful way for people to estimate how far they are from promotion, and also a useful way to measure how wrong the leagues are.
Each match in a tournament is currently limited to 25 minutes. This would equate roughly to a 35-minute game in Heart of the Swarm due to the game-clock changes in Legacy of the Void. If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value. Experience is accrued throughout the game by earning money, constructing units, destroying units, etc.
Really dislike this. I can see so many people getting a loss for games they were going to win. Hope they find a better solution than exp points..
Do you pay attention to scores? How often are you up in points and lose? I know people will always figure out a way to work the system, but the reality is for the most part, the person who is going to win has the most points. And if you notice someone is trying to just turtle up and win then you can do the same thing and at that point it almost becomes a coin toss.
The time limit is needed. I don't want to enter a tournament and then have to wait an hour to play the next game because two players are sitting around doing nothing, or even worse both just leave for some reason. I'm sure when they picked the time limit they had data to look at the average length of a game which is probably in the 10-20 minute range and then added a few minutes to that so essentially only a higher sliver of games will end up in a draw anyway. I can say so far playing Beta with all the new units and ways to make things happen having games go longer than 25 minutes isn't very common.
I don't know how the WC3 system worked but I don't remember having to wait too long. Granted, that was over 12 or 13 years ago.
The War3 system actually functioned very similarly to Hearthstone's Arena system, at least for matchmaking in the prelim phase. It's a Schenkel system (variant of the Swiss-style format) where you play against opponents of identical record for that tournament over a 3-hour period. You could play as many games as you wanted, up to a max of 8. Wins gave you 3 points, losses -1, and ties 1 (the game could not be completed within the time limit). After the prelim phase ended, the top 16 players by points would advance to the finals.
The finals had a standard knockout bracket with each round starting and ending at a fixed time.
It was pretty fun. Of course, since it wasn't subdivided by skill level, you could utterly stomp one opponent and then get stomped in the very next game. You could be a low-MMR guy who happened to beat a lower-MMR guy, then get matched against a high-MMR guy the next game. This is one thing that bracketing out tournaments by league will directly address, and it's actually a very smart move to integrate an existing system. paralleluniverse is getting bogged down in the fact that the tournaments will use meaningless league icons, but they don't have to tie the brackets to the icons themselves, just the rating ranges that correspond to those leagues. Mismatches will still happen if a player is higher or lower than they should be, but it's going to happen much less often than War3's method.
I have no problem with bracketing out tournaments by MMR (but not by league).
In fact, I praised it as a good innovation for allowing everyone a chance of winning.
You say that the league brackets in tournaments could just mean that Blizzard is using the MMR range associated with the league. Maybe, or maybe not. If it's true, then calling it a "Platinum" tournament is just misleading because not everyone in the tournament is platinum. You often get matched with players outside of your league (which is one clue that they're just wrong), so there's no reason to assume tournament matchmaking won't also match outside of leagues. If it's not true, i.e. a "Platinum" tournament only has platinum players, then why doesn't also ordinary matchmaking enforce this strange rule?
I'm just saying there should be a 3rd tournament format that doesn't group by MMR or leagues. It doesn't have to follow the details of WC3 tournament matchmaking exactly, just the principle that anyone can be matched with anyone (bracketing by MMR won't be as accurate as not, when you have to find the best player in only 5 or 6 games).
It does say "Platinum Level" which suggests to me "in or around Platinum" and by extension the rating range spanning Platinum. If it simply said "1v1 Platinum" it would be a lot more ambiguous to me. I do wonder though if you can enter a Platinum Level tournament if your rating has fallen to Gold or Silver but you retain the Platinum icon...
Just tested this. I'm in Bronze league, but got put in a Gold league tournament. There are players in Bronze, Silver and Gold.
So the league of the tournament is just as dodgy as the league of the players.
I"d assume the players are matched my MMR, not by league. Which means that there can be players in gold, silver and bronze, all with similar MMR, but that isn't really news I think?
I just got promoted to Silver after my 2nd tournament game. Not Gold yet. I don't think I have Gold MMR, but I'm still in a Gold tournament. So it seems the Gold MMR criteria for being a Gold tournament is likely approximate.
If it were true that Gold tournaments = Gold MMR, then that would be a useful way for people to estimate how far they are from promotion, and also a useful way to measure how wrong the leagues are.
There will be a range of MMR in each tournament, maybe the pick the highest MMR to display? So that a gold tournament is a tournament where at least one player has gold MMR? Or it's mean MMR or something, and your MMR is enough to be matched with low gold/high silver players.
If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value
bad system
I haven't tried it but please elaborate, how and why is it a bad system?
I can see that it definitely isn't ideal, but there has to be some way to enforce the 25 minute time limit, so what would you suggest?
the argument I've seen against this system is it promotes using the most efficient possible strategy, which often means the most turtley one.
the counter -argument I have seen to that is if the enemy turtles then you can just grab the entire map and never attack, thereby winning because you have mined thousands of points worth of resources more.
I have not seen this effect in action nor have I tried it, so I don't actually know if either of these arguments are true, but I would very much like to see a constructive argument be made around it.
Each match in a tournament is currently limited to 25 minutes. This would equate roughly to a 35-minute game in Heart of the Swarm due to the game-clock changes in Legacy of the Void. If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value. Experience is accrued throughout the game by earning money, constructing units, destroying units, etc.
Really dislike this. I can see so many people getting a loss for games they were going to win. Hope they find a better solution than exp points..
Do you pay attention to scores? How often are you up in points and lose? I know people will always figure out a way to work the system, but the reality is for the most part, the person who is going to win has the most points. And if you notice someone is trying to just turtle up and win then you can do the same thing and at that point it almost becomes a coin toss.
The time limit is needed. I don't want to enter a tournament and then have to wait an hour to play the next game because two players are sitting around doing nothing, or even worse both just leave for some reason. I'm sure when they picked the time limit they had data to look at the average length of a game which is probably in the 10-20 minute range and then added a few minutes to that so essentially only a higher sliver of games will end up in a draw anyway. I can say so far playing Beta with all the new units and ways to make things happen having games go longer than 25 minutes isn't very common.
I don't know how the WC3 system worked but I don't remember having to wait too long. Granted, that was over 12 or 13 years ago.
The War3 system actually functioned very similarly to Hearthstone's Arena system, at least for matchmaking in the prelim phase. It's a Schenkel system (variant of the Swiss-style format) where you play against opponents of identical record for that tournament over a 3-hour period. You could play as many games as you wanted, up to a max of 8. Wins gave you 3 points, losses -1, and ties 1 (the game could not be completed within the time limit). After the prelim phase ended, the top 16 players by points would advance to the finals.
The finals had a standard knockout bracket with each round starting and ending at a fixed time.
It was pretty fun. Of course, since it wasn't subdivided by skill level, you could utterly stomp one opponent and then get stomped in the very next game. You could be a low-MMR guy who happened to beat a lower-MMR guy, then get matched against a high-MMR guy the next game. This is one thing that bracketing out tournaments by league will directly address, and it's actually a very smart move to integrate an existing system. paralleluniverse is getting bogged down in the fact that the tournaments will use meaningless league icons, but they don't have to tie the brackets to the icons themselves, just the rating ranges that correspond to those leagues. Mismatches will still happen if a player is higher or lower than they should be, but it's going to happen much less often than War3's method.
I have no problem with bracketing out tournaments by MMR (but not by league).
In fact, I praised it as a good innovation for allowing everyone a chance of winning.
You say that the league brackets in tournaments could just mean that Blizzard is using the MMR range associated with the league. Maybe, or maybe not. If it's true, then calling it a "Platinum" tournament is just misleading because not everyone in the tournament is platinum. You often get matched with players outside of your league (which is one clue that they're just wrong), so there's no reason to assume tournament matchmaking won't also match outside of leagues. If it's not true, i.e. a "Platinum" tournament only has platinum players, then why doesn't also ordinary matchmaking enforce this strange rule?
I'm just saying there should be a 3rd tournament format that doesn't group by MMR or leagues. It doesn't have to follow the details of WC3 tournament matchmaking exactly, just the principle that anyone can be matched with anyone (bracketing by MMR won't be as accurate as not, when you have to find the best player in only 5 or 6 games).
It does say "Platinum Level" which suggests to me "in or around Platinum" and by extension the rating range spanning Platinum. If it simply said "1v1 Platinum" it would be a lot more ambiguous to me. I do wonder though if you can enter a Platinum Level tournament if your rating has fallen to Gold or Silver but you retain the Platinum icon...
Just tested this. I'm in Bronze league, but got put in a Gold league tournament. There are players in Bronze, Silver and Gold.
So the league of the tournament is just as dodgy as the league of the players.
That's the player pool of the beta though, not retail, and they did say that the entry requirements would be looser to compensate for that. I'll ask for confirmation.
I don't like how these tournaments are scheduled. It would be much better if you just sign in and wait till there are 7 more players in your skill range ready to go.
scheduled tournaments maybe should be a thing too, but then you could do wc3 style/bo3/whatever
That's a nice addition. Hope they add the capability to have custom "lobby" tournaments with your friends with options like best of 3 and tournament watching.
If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value
bad system
I haven't tried it but please elaborate, how and why is it a bad system?
I can see that it definitely isn't ideal, but there has to be some way to enforce the 25 minute time limit, so what would you suggest?
the argument I've seen against this system is it promotes using the most efficient possible strategy, which often means the most turtley one.
the counter -argument I have seen to that is if the enemy turtles then you can just grab the entire map and never attack, thereby winning because you have mined thousands of points worth of resources more.
I have not seen this effect in action nor have I tried it, so I don't actually know if either of these arguments are true, but I would very much like to see a constructive argument be made around it.
Winning based on an arbitrary exp point system (that wasn't designed for it) if neither player is 100% eliminated just has the potential to skew the games into being about something other than beating your opponent like you would in a real game/tournament
If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value
bad system
I haven't tried it but please elaborate, how and why is it a bad system?
I can see that it definitely isn't ideal, but there has to be some way to enforce the 25 minute time limit, so what would you suggest?
the argument I've seen against this system is it promotes using the most efficient possible strategy, which often means the most turtley one.
the counter -argument I have seen to that is if the enemy turtles then you can just grab the entire map and never attack, thereby winning because you have mined thousands of points worth of resources more.
I have not seen this effect in action nor have I tried it, so I don't actually know if either of these arguments are true, but I would very much like to see a constructive argument be made around it.
Winning based on an arbitrary exp point system (that wasn't designed for it) if neither player is 100% eliminated just has the potential to skew the games into being about something other than beating your opponent like you would in a real game/tournament
Would you prefer draws? Which would encourage running around the map building pylons/extractors/depots Would you prefer a specific building/unit/supply count? Which would amount to the same thing as points but doesn't take into account efficiently trading units.
What system do you think is most fair as a tie breaker?
I can't think of a great one (at least not without a ton of effort) but the game length seems a bit too short. If it was longer, it would be more ok to win based on an imperfect system
I posted a FAQ about this stuff which basically summarizes the information presented in the blog post, but Psione replied with some additional information to unanswered questions:
Q: What determines the league badge for a tournament? Average MMR? Highest/Lowest Participating? A: It matches by MMR and determines league through the highest league of the players participating. This explains why players like paralleluniverse had a "Gold Level" tournament populated by Bronze, Silver, and Gold players. Part of that was probably the looser calibration due to the smaller player pool of the beta, so a span of 3 leagues is probably unlikely. Nevertheless, it illustrates that "Gold Level" or "Platinum Level" or "Master Level" does not represent a fixed rating range, it's going to vary from tournament to tournament.
Q: Do tournament match outcomes affect MMR? Can promotions happen by winning a tournament match? A: Yes. One goal is to allow players to exclusively play tournaments for league progression if they wish. That's cool, didn't see that one coming.
Q: Are there rewards attached to collecting tournament wins or becoming grand champion? A: Rewards are still being worked on, but there will be some form of reward for winning a tournament.
If you win the tournament it says there is a website with actual winners list. Is the website online if yes can someone write the link here down? Thnx.
On August 22 2015 11:05 Excalibur_Z wrote: Q: What determines the league badge for a tournament? Average MMR? Highest/Lowest Participating? A: It matches by MMR and determines league through the highest league of the players participating. This explains why players like paralleluniverse had a "Gold Level" tournament populated by Bronze, Silver, and Gold players. Part of that was probably the looser calibration due to the smaller player pool of the beta, so a span of 3 leagues is probably unlikely. Nevertheless, it illustrates that "Gold Level" or "Platinum Level" or "Master Level" does not represent a fixed rating range, it's going to vary from tournament to tournament.
So I got promoted to Gold in LotV today. In summary, I was Bronze, got put into a Gold tournament, after 2 games in the tournament, I got promoted to Silver, and then 4 games after that I got promoted to Gold.
This seems to align with what Psione said, that tournaments "matches by MMR". Meaning that tournaments can be used to give a indication of how close you are to promotion. In other word, an indication of how wrong the leagues are. You could already kinda do something similar now by looking at the league of the players in your last 16 matches, but it would be slightly less informative than looking at the tournament participants as your MMR can change a bit over 16 games.
The tournament being labeled by the highest league of its participants seems pointless. It's not new information, it's not interesting information, it's information with no point. I don't understand the point of showing it. Maybe they just think leagues are really cool and awesome (lol).
On August 22 2015 11:05 Excalibur_Z wrote: Q: What determines the league badge for a tournament? Average MMR? Highest/Lowest Participating? A: It matches by MMR and determines league through the highest league of the players participating. This explains why players like paralleluniverse had a "Gold Level" tournament populated by Bronze, Silver, and Gold players. Part of that was probably the looser calibration due to the smaller player pool of the beta, so a span of 3 leagues is probably unlikely. Nevertheless, it illustrates that "Gold Level" or "Platinum Level" or "Master Level" does not represent a fixed rating range, it's going to vary from tournament to tournament.
So I got promoted to Gold in LotV today. In summary, I was Bronze, got put into a Gold tournament, after 2 games in the tournament, I got promoted to Silver, and then 4 games after that I got promoted to Gold.
This seems to align with what Psione said, that tournaments "matches by MMR". Meaning that tournaments can be used to give a indication of how close you are to promotion. In other word, an indication of how wrong the leagues are. You could already kinda do something similar now by looking at the league of the players in your last 16 matches, but it would be slightly less informative than looking at the tournament participants as your MMR can change a bit over 16 games.
The tournament being labeled by the highest league of its participants seems pointless. It's not new information, it's not interesting information, it's information with no point. I don't understand the point of showing it. Maybe they just think leagues are really cool and awesome (lol).
I can see people being excited when they get put into a platinum league for the first time.
If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value
bad system
I haven't tried it but please elaborate, how and why is it a bad system?
I can see that it definitely isn't ideal, but there has to be some way to enforce the 25 minute time limit, so what would you suggest?
the argument I've seen against this system is it promotes using the most efficient possible strategy, which often means the most turtley one.
the counter -argument I have seen to that is if the enemy turtles then you can just grab the entire map and never attack, thereby winning because you have mined thousands of points worth of resources more.
I have not seen this effect in action nor have I tried it, so I don't actually know if either of these arguments are true, but I would very much like to see a constructive argument be made around it.
Winning based on an arbitrary exp point system (that wasn't designed for it) if neither player is 100% eliminated just has the potential to skew the games into being about something other than beating your opponent like you would in a real game/tournament
Would you prefer draws? Which would encourage running around the map building pylons/extractors/depots Would you prefer a specific building/unit/supply count? Which would amount to the same thing as points but doesn't take into account efficiently trading units.
What system do you think is most fair as a tie breaker?
I don't think a "tie-breaker" is right to consider it a proper tournament. 35 minutes of game-time in HOTS, i played plenty of games on ladder longer than that.
To be fair I'm not going to hate on it too much until I try it but I do think you will see some silly complaints about players who were clearly winning but who lost on XP, because god knows that the points stat at the end of the game has never truly been relevant to what happened in the game. I've lost many of games where I'm higher in points or won when i'm lower because points don't matter if you make a mistake that costs you the game.
On August 22 2015 03:21 Cyro wrote: I can't think of a great one (at least not without a ton of effort) but the game length seems a bit too short. If it was longer, it would be more ok to win based on an imperfect system
Add 5 minutes onto a match and a 3/6-round Bo1 might take 15/30 minutes longer to complete and it only goes up from there. I don't think you can reasonably expect casual players to stick around for that long with out dropping out.
On August 22 2015 03:21 Cyro wrote: I can't think of a great one (at least not without a ton of effort) but the game length seems a bit too short. If it was longer, it would be more ok to win based on an imperfect system
Add 5 minutes onto a match and a 3/6-round Bo1 might take 15/30 minutes longer to complete and it only goes up from there. I don't think you can reasonably expect casual players to stick around for that long with out dropping out.
There is a little button to the bottom left, if everyone clicks Ready it skips that 15~30min waiting process.
If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value
bad system
I haven't tried it but please elaborate, how and why is it a bad system?
I can see that it definitely isn't ideal, but there has to be some way to enforce the 25 minute time limit, so what would you suggest?
the argument I've seen against this system is it promotes using the most efficient possible strategy, which often means the most turtley one.
the counter -argument I have seen to that is if the enemy turtles then you can just grab the entire map and never attack, thereby winning because you have mined thousands of points worth of resources more.
I have not seen this effect in action nor have I tried it, so I don't actually know if either of these arguments are true, but I would very much like to see a constructive argument be made around it.
Winning based on an arbitrary exp point system (that wasn't designed for it) if neither player is 100% eliminated just has the potential to skew the games into being about something other than beating your opponent like you would in a real game/tournament
Would you prefer draws? Which would encourage running around the map building pylons/extractors/depots Would you prefer a specific building/unit/supply count? Which would amount to the same thing as points but doesn't take into account efficiently trading units.
What system do you think is most fair as a tie breaker?
I don't think a "tie-breaker" is right to consider it a proper tournament. 35 minutes of game-time in HOTS, i played plenty of games on ladder longer than that.
To be fair I'm not going to hate on it too much until I try it but I do think you will see some silly complaints about players who were clearly winning but who lost on XP, because god knows that the points stat at the end of the game has never truly been relevant to what happened in the game. I've lost many of games where I'm higher in points or won when i'm lower because points don't matter if you make a mistake that costs you the game.
It is arbitrary which one it is. So long as draws aren't allowed it will be fine--because it would such for terran to float everywhere and you get a draw while waiting for your flyers to build. Or to get a draw because your protoss opponent spread all 60 probes around the map to make pylons at the 23 minute mark.
Points, supply count, building count, whatever the scoring system (or lack thereof) is fine so long as they don't do draws. It will create a weird metagame where being more aggressive and having a bigger economy will be helpful.
If the game reaches the 25-minute limit, victory will be awarded to the player who has the highest experience point value
bad system
I haven't tried it but please elaborate, how and why is it a bad system?
I can see that it definitely isn't ideal, but there has to be some way to enforce the 25 minute time limit, so what would you suggest?
the argument I've seen against this system is it promotes using the most efficient possible strategy, which often means the most turtley one.
the counter -argument I have seen to that is if the enemy turtles then you can just grab the entire map and never attack, thereby winning because you have mined thousands of points worth of resources more.
I have not seen this effect in action nor have I tried it, so I don't actually know if either of these arguments are true, but I would very much like to see a constructive argument be made around it.
Winning based on an arbitrary exp point system (that wasn't designed for it) if neither player is 100% eliminated just has the potential to skew the games into being about something other than beating your opponent like you would in a real game/tournament
Would you prefer draws? Which would encourage running around the map building pylons/extractors/depots Would you prefer a specific building/unit/supply count? Which would amount to the same thing as points but doesn't take into account efficiently trading units.
What system do you think is most fair as a tie breaker?
I don't think a "tie-breaker" is right to consider it a proper tournament. 35 minutes of game-time in HOTS, i played plenty of games on ladder longer than that.
To be fair I'm not going to hate on it too much until I try it but I do think you will see some silly complaints about players who were clearly winning but who lost on XP, because god knows that the points stat at the end of the game has never truly been relevant to what happened in the game. I've lost many of games where I'm higher in points or won when i'm lower because points don't matter if you make a mistake that costs you the game.
It is arbitrary which one it is. So long as draws aren't allowed it will be fine--because it would such for terran to float everywhere and you get a draw while waiting for your flyers to build. Or to get a draw because your protoss opponent spread all 60 probes around the map to make pylons at the 23 minute mark.
Points, supply count, building count, whatever the scoring system (or lack thereof) is fine so long as they don't do draws. It will create a weird metagame where being more aggressive and having a bigger economy will be helpful.
The reason of the time limit is to keep the tournaments short. Allowing draws beats that purpose, so I don't think they would do that.
When someone plays an automated tournament (which is a cool feature) I guess that there is no way to watch it apart from if one of the players is streaming?
Has anyone experienced issues with the points = win system? I'd even be curious if anyone has noticed ladder games where they've won despite having a lower score?
On August 28 2015 16:39 y0su wrote: Has anyone experienced issues with the points = win system? I'd even be curious if anyone has noticed ladder games where they've won despite having a lower score?
It's not points points, it's experience points. You know, the little XP numbers that appear when you build something or destroy something. It keeps a running total of that for both players and the higher XP value for that game is the winner if the time limit is hit.
On August 28 2015 16:39 y0su wrote: Has anyone experienced issues with the points = win system? I'd even be curious if anyone has noticed ladder games where they've won despite having a lower score?
It's not points points, it's experience points. You know, the little XP numbers that appear when you build something or destroy something. It keeps a running total of that for both players and the higher XP value for that game is the winner if the time limit is hit.
I always thought they were the same thing - whatever was used to calculate "points" was just converted to "XP" for leveling. How different are they?
I still don't quite understand why these tournaments are scheduled at certain times tbh. Why not just let players sign up and as soon as there are enough players start it? I bet there would be a lot of interest in playing tournaments pretty much all the time, but i probably will NEVER play one if i have to be online at a specific time
On August 22 2015 03:21 Cyro wrote: I can't think of a great one (at least not without a ton of effort) but the game length seems a bit too short. If it was longer, it would be more ok to win based on an imperfect system
I think it's good enough tbh. Tournaments are ready painful enough as it is cos most of the time as it is, you have to wait the full duration before the next round. During the weekend tournaments, it gets so bad that you can be waiting hours in total, especially if you skip round 3. Games in LotV don't tend to even reach that game length, most people get there their matches done really quicker, and then go play ladder games and delay the entire tournament.
I don't know what they can do to make these tournaments less painful, but lengthening the game length would be the worst thing they could do.