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[theory]

What do people think about such tournaments in the future?  What should we do?  Keep it an annual thing?  Run monthly leagues?  Run leagues as qualifiers for year-end championships?

I liked the BGGDL, and I know many others did too, but it ran a little too frequently for it to be meaningful.  MMM's IsoDom tournaments are also quite nice, but if you had them all the time it'd lose some importance.

[DG]

Two a year might work. Winter and Summer might be good except that they will hit the holiday seasons. If you had more tournaments then perhaps you could change the format or entry between tournaments, within reason. A 'base set' bias tournament might be a good starter.

[Buggz]

I agree with the two a year, also because the tournament itself takes some time to finish. Concerning holidays, you'll probably hit them regardless of time of year.

[DrHades]

How about 2 tournaments a year with 512 contestants and then an EPIC battle of the two winners (best of 19?) with an article from someone (probably the winner) for every single game? 

[Captain_Frisk]

The good:
- Best of 7 format is nice
- Quality of opponents is good... I don't think i've been that stressed about a dominion match in a long while, except maybe in those matches where you're trying to catch up in your head to head record with me

The bad:
- Scheduling specific opponents is tough
- Having to post your results and manually process them is a pain - I bet RRenaud could whip you up a website that just let you pass in a game link and auto extract info
- Not a lot of community discussion thus far... maybe some analysis of major upsets / commentary would be interesting.

Other eventish ideas:
- It would require help from DougZ, but some kind of "massive match" would be cool... like a simultaneous match between theory and 40 different people (maybe with the same table of cards?) - with point tracker off, and isotropic swaps you to each room after you make your move, and everyone in the same room, laughing as theory has potion rage @ familiar.  I'd be curious to see how many simultaneos games someone could play before their skill level drops as a result of not having a good sense of game state.
- DominionStrategyCon?  With 256 contestants, there have to be some local pockets of dominion fiends out there who would be interested in face to face.
- Some kindof an "all at once" tournament for those who can all get on at the same time... probably can't do best of 7, and it couldn't be as large, but I bet it would be a fun thing to do after work somenight, especially if we were all in the councilroom IRC.
-

[Thisisnotasmile]

TBH I wouldn't really be interested in another tournament unless I could be guaranteed an opponent in a local (i.e. +-4 hours) timezone for the first few rounds at least. I was so tired during my match this time that I couldn't concentrate and I don't feel like wasting my time doing the same again.

[mrdirt73]

I would like to see a tiered tournament.  Something with a beginner level (ranks 0-10) intermediate level (11-30) and an expert level (31+) As it was this time, I didn't feel like I really had a shot at winning the overall tournament so I wasn't overly motivated to sign up.  In hindsight I kinda wish I had though just for the experience.

[Kirian]

Pools.  Take the 256 players and split into 8 pools of 32 each, ideally split by time zones as much as possible.  Much like the BGGDL, play against as many pool members as you can, probably best of 5 instead of 7, since it's possible some people might play 31 matches--and ideally everyone would!  Let the pools period run at least two months, perhaps three.

End of the pool period, take the top 4 from each pool into a 5-round best-of-7 tournament, seeded based on pool rankings and win rates.

I'm sure we'd need BGGDL-like discussion about how to deal with a player who got in 31 matches vs. one who got 20, but that could be discussed.


Also:  What mrdirt said, though with overlapping ranges (under 20, 10-30, 20-40, 31+) so that people can choose to play a bit tougher or a bit easier tournament.  Such a set of tourneys probably couldn't have prizes though.

[greatexpectations]

captain frisk's post got me thinking about his ideas and a few more.

- dominionstrategycon seemed like an interesting idea.  a live tournament(s) or gaming session could be fun, as well as a chance to meet some of your fellow gamers.
- a massive one shot isotropic tournament would be interesting too.  as many players as possible, single elimination craziness.
- dominion world cup? each country holds a tournament to choose a representative, and then those representatives fight it out in a tournament?  might help the scheduling issues too, as time zones wouldn't have an effect until the last few matches. and to keep up with the world cup motif, you could integrate some pool play as well.
- i have seen in a few other forms a "belt" system, where you would have to defeat the current holder to gain the title. i had a group of friends in college with a similar system built around the game of settlers of catan. the winner would gain "the chalice", and would hold it until he/she was defeated, at which point it would pass onto the new winner. it encouraged not only regular gaming but also some highly competitive play. so for dominion, you could have a holder, and to gain the title you would have to win a best of 3/5/7 match.  maybe make the holder play a minimum of once/twice a week or so to hold the title.  this could probably be managed pretty easily in a dedicated thread. and again, you could break down by location/level too. usa/europe only, <20 level, etc.

[Forge!!!]

I like the idea of a yearly tournament. It takes a while for the whole thing to take place, and I think after a while doing twice a year would be tiring.

The main problem I had with this tournament was the feeling that I didn't get to participate much at all. (though my opponent being a badass didn't help with that) I think either having two tournaments, one for higher levels and one for lower levels, or having a pool play round one might be interesting, though more difficult to set up. Something that allowed me to play more than one opponent.

[Thisisnotasmile]

Something that allowed me to play more than one opponent.

Double elimination?

[Forge!!!]

Double elimination could be interesting. Don't some tournaments have a winners and a losers bracket?

[Tables]

I was going to suggest near the start of the tournament having pool/mini-leagues for the first round, like Kirian is suggesting, but realised it would obviously be a 'next year' suggestion as it's pretty complex. So, uh... yeah. Suggestion is here now.

You could split people into leagues of, say, 8 people, with 1 month for games and the aim to play everyone four times, twice as first player and twice as second. Then have some tiebreakers in place and have the top two progress into a knockout tournament like our current one. There are a few obvious advantages and disadvantages of the system, which I'll summarise Advantages first:

• You can group players by timezone for the leagues. That way, people won't be pushed to play awkward times until 3/4s of the players have been knocked out, which makes things a little more pleasant. While it wasn't a huge concern, I wasn't exactly happy having both my rounds 1 and 2 being at -7 hours from me.
• Everyone gets to play 7 opponents, 4 times each, at minimum. That's 28 games in the tournament, no matter how well or badly you're doing.
• The results of the leagues can be a lot fairer as there are more games (and more opponents) to tier players on.

Of course, there are some disadvantages:

• You have to organise 7 different games with 7 different people. That can be a bit difficult, although having a lot more time available does mitigate it a bit
• There's potential for 'slingshotting' players through the system. By which I mean two people can conspire to get one extra wins (unlikely but possible), or once a player has guaranteed they're through, they might not worry about their other games and play suboptimally or even not turn up, knowing they can take the loss, which unfairly rewards players who play later in the sytem

Personally, I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages but of course it's up to you guys to choose what's best.

I'd also prefer a single (main) league per year, but I'd also quite like some lower level leagues just for fun, e.g. a level <20 league.

[andwilk]

Piggybacking on Tables' replyabove, what if we used these mini-leagues as a qualification process for the year-end, end-all-be-all championship tournament?  Run a few of these throughout the year and you would have a hybrid league/tournament type format that has importance.

Another idea that I had was to run 4 "major" tournaments throughout the year, each with a different format to keep things fresh.  They could even have stratification for higher level competition and lower level competition.

[Mean Mr Mustard]

I will probably continue organizing tournaments when I feel up to it as long as I can find 16 players.  My interest in Dominion is pretty low at this moment but in a month or two we'll see.

[ST218]

Multiplayer tournaments. I understand that 1v1 Dominion is the most "pure", competitively, but 3 and 4 player games add a new dimension that I think is worth exploring.

Of course, scheduling would be a pain too, but I'm sure that could be worked around relatively easily (get batches of entrants that have similar availabilities, and then set up meeting times on Isotropic).

Tangent: I just had an interesting idea not at all dependent on the above-a multiplayer multigame series that starts with, say, 4 players and then dwindles-lowest score drops out. So, Alice, Bob, Charlie, and Dvorak play a game, Charlie scores the least, then Alive, Bob, Dvorak play, and then Alice gets the fewest amount of points, so then Bob and Dvorak play, and then Bob strikes a blow for generically named examples everywhere and beats Dvorak and goes on to the next round.

Edit: Oh, yeah, timing. Two a year sounds just fine-often enough to be planned and trained for, far enough away that they don't become trite and overdone.

[Axxle]

What do people think about such tournaments in the future?  What should we do?  Keep it an annual thing?  Run monthly leagues?  Run leagues as qualifiers for year-end championships?

I liked the BGGDL, and I know many others did too, but it ran a little too frequently for it to be meaningful.  MMM's IsoDom tournaments are also quite nice, but if you had them all the time it'd lose some importance.

The frequency and style of the BGGDL was important when we didn't have the leaderboard to have a constant point of reference to how we fared compared to other players.  I think another style of tournament would be best instead of the odd round-robin that we had for that league.  If we have the turnout like we had for this large tournament I think only having it as frequent as seasonally (ie four times a year) would be best.

Maybe instead of a single/double elimination tournament we could have some sort of swiss tournament?  This way players don't get eliminated right away and feel left out.  And then the top 4 or 8 in the swiss play each other a single elimination bracket or something.

[Geronimoo]

A multi-player tournament is definitely in order!!

[timchen]

I think a big (single/double) elimination tournament once or twice a year is best. One round a week is easy enough to find a common time for you and your opponent, as well as not disturbing the life outside dominion. Up to now I feel best of 7 is pretty good.

A swiss tournament is probably better to be squeezed in a weekend or something like that... I cannot imagine playing a swiss tournament a round a week... feels too inconsequential. Also it is hard to score, as we all know there is hardly further distinction aside from a win or a loss.

If the tournament goes as frequent as the old BGGDL, for me it loses its appeal rather quickly. Also, I am not a fan of rewarding the frequency of playing.

[Buggz]

I don't know if I agree with a multiplayer tournament, we've already had several cases of last minute plays and some forfeits because it can be hard enough to find a time with a single opponent in another timezone. I imagine (pure speculation) trying to do this with two opponents can be difficult. Even if the starting brackets consist of players in similar timezone (already a pain according to theory), once the starting rounds are over it'll be a complete mix.


Disclaimer: 3-player dominion is my favorite.

[Geronimoo]

Do a multi-player tournament for each time zone. I think it will be fun to see the top players getting their asses kicked by randoms who only play 3-player games.

[rspeer]

I really like the idea of a 3-player tournament. You can have three divisions in three time zones. Then the final is among the winners of each division, and that's only one match that's really complicated to schedule.

What would make sense to me is to pre-define the times that people play in each division. As in, I might join a Tuesday 3:00 GMT division, where everyone in the division plays on Tuesday at 3:00 GMT, every week.

You'd probably want to have each division start with a "group stage" or "regular season" in the Swiss system, and use single-elimination only for the semi-finals and finals. Doing single-elimination all the way would be a pretty short tournament. And starting with a group stage allows numbers of competitors that aren't a power of 3, or even different numbers of players per division. (Hint: join a less crowded division if you can!)

[WanderingWinder]

I think a multiplayer tournament is a great idea conceptually. Pulling it off logistically might be a bit of an issue. But I might even dust off my multiplaying skills to try it. The other issue is that the third (and every subsequent) player tends to have a big effect on things, so if there's a level 36 and a 31 and a 4, what the 4 does is going to very often determine which of the other two wins, even if it's really bad. Now this is a much, much smaller problem in dominion than in a lot of other games, but it's still a problem. But I suppose that's somewhat just the nature of gaming.

I would like to see some kind of structure for a tournament where, say, the lower seeds have to win a lower-seed tournament, or maybe win a couple matches against other low players, to get moved up into the next section, and soforth. So it would look something like this:
First section: Everyone level 0-10 plays, top X advance into second section.
2nd section: Level 11-20 plus advancers from below play, top X advance into 3rd section.
3rd section: Level 21-30 plus advancers from below play, top X advance into 4th section.
4th section: Level 31-40 plus advancers from below play, top X advance into final section.
Final section: Level 41+ and the top players from below battle it out, possibly with longer matches or even double round robin.

Cons: This is a much longer tournament, the top players play much less in it, seeding counts for a lot more, did I mention it's much, much longer?
Pros: Lower players play a lot more, the matches are much more even in general, seeding counts for a lot more, you can have some really intense finals.

You might want to supplement this with some other stuff. And I think once a year for the big tourneys like this. Smaller ones like MMM has run are fine on a more frequent basis.

[Jack Rudd]

Something that allowed me to play more than one opponent.

The Swiss System is your friend. I'd be up for running a tournament on the Swiss system.

[buggibum]

I'd love to see an invite only of the top16 as long as they also willing to participate, otherwise replacements from the next ladder ones to crown one tournament champion of the season.
Of course those matches would generate much bigger interests, reports and legacy then. Unfortunately there is no spectator mode like in bsw for live audience experience.