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AdamH

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Online tournament format ideas
« on: April 24, 2016, 08:17:56 pm »
+7

Hi. You may remember me. I'm looking to organize an online Dominion tournament. Details on the tournament are unclear at the moment, but that's mostly because I want those details to be community-driven, that's why I'm here.

I would like to give F.DS the chance to give their feedback on how they think the tournament should go. I have several goals in mind but even those are flexible at this point.

Here's the deal: while a lot of things are community-driven, there are a few things that aren't. I don't really want to post here on F.DS, so the tournament will not be hosted on F.DS. Sorry. Where exactly it's hosted isn't entirely clear yet but it will probably have its own subreddit where things will be organized.

I've made a post on the Dominion subreddit detailing my ideas and the type of feedback I'd like to receive. I'll link that post and quote it at the bottom here for your convenience. If you have a reddit account, of course I'd prefer that you give your feedback there, but that's not realistic for everyone here, so I'll also be following this thread for feedback and potentially answering questions.

Let me be clear: I'm acutely aware of this forum's tendencies to bring up things that are unrelated to the topic and completely derail the thread. While there are many things that people may want to talk about here other than providing me feedback, I'm not going to respond to them. You're welcome to send me PMs if you want to talk about something else. If the thread gets too far away from this topic, of course there's nothing I can do about that, but just realize that what will happen is that F.DS will not get to have its voice represented because I'll just stop following this thread.

I'm going to run this tournament regardless of F.DS's participation in giving feedback or even playing in it. Also, for the curious, I have been in contact with the League moderators and once a format and rough timeline have been established, the mods will poll the League members and ask what they want to do about the League schedule. One of the reasons I'd like to try a format that can be shortened (or broken up into smaller pieces) is to make this decision easier on the people in the league, but all of that is out of my hands, we'll just see what ends up happening.

Anyways, here's the post. Please read and let me know what you think.

Quote from: reddit
Hi.

So I want to put together an online tournament, I'm making this thread to gauge the interest in this community for a tournament like this, and also to see what kind of format would be most appealing to people.

I am aware that the Dominion League is a thing. I'm currently working with the League moderators to try and coordinate things so that whatever tournament I run will happen between seasons of the League. The purpose of this is to provide an alternative format for online competitive play; something that feels different.

Based on what I've heard from some people, in addition to a couple of things I personally want to see, I want to make a list of goals for this tournament format:

- To provide opportunities for lower-level players to get some visibility with their matches
- To coordinate broadcasting and commentary for any players who want to have this for their matches (ideally giving a larger group of people a chance to try their hand at giving commentary)
- To be novel and exciting
- To operate the tournament with complete transparency

If anyone has ideas for more goals, let me know and I may even edit them into this list if I can remember to do that.

So with these goals in mind, I have a few rough ideas for tournament formats. If any of these sound appealing to you, or you have any ideas, let me know. Here are some things I'm thinking of:

A. Have a couple of different "seasons." So have a mini-tournament where only people at level X or below are allowed to enter, this would take place between two League seasons, then the league has a season. Now, our next season will allow entries from level X to level Y, along with the top Z finishers from the first season.

This isn't perfect, since it means that lots of people would sit out and be unable to play for a bit. Maybe run each of these seasons in parallel? Once you do this, though, it starts to look a lot like the League, which takes away from "novel and exciting." So there's a balance to be struck here.

B. Have significant landmarks at a couple of key points in the tournament. A couple of ideas I have for this are:

- Play three matches, eliminate the bottom X%. Play three more matches, eliminate the bottom Y%, continue until the field is small enough to do some kind of finals thing. This naturally puts the focus on people in the middle throughout the course of the tournament, so not necessarily the top players.
- Break the field up into 4 or 8 divisions and have a champion of each of those divisions. The divisions could be seeded so that high-level players and low-level players are in their own divisions, then once each division has a champion, they ENTER THE COLOSSEUM to battle it out for the title, David vs. Goliath style.

As for actual tournament format, well Swiss and elimination will both work for a lot of these, once there is a concept that seems popular I imagine one of them will be a better fit for that concept.

As for commentary, I sort of want that to play a big role in this tournament. Competitive matches are great for commentary and I know there are a lot of people out there who want to do commentary and who also want their matches to be commentated on. I want there to be a group of people available for commentary so that anyone can say "hey, Jimbob and I are playing a match on Saturday, who can commentate?" and have people available to broadcast the match. I'll have to set up lots of technical resources for commentators as well as a place to coordinate things, but this should get a lot of people the opportunity to practice and pursue it further if it turns out to interest them. Suggestions for that are welcome, but that's sort of independent of tournament format and schedule, so it makes more sense to tackle the specifics of that when/if there's actually a tournament it can go with.

So comment here for the following things:
1. You would be interested in playing in such a tournament.
2. You would be interested in casting games in such a tournament (you can do both of these).
3. You have any feedback for goals of the tournament, any ideas I've suggested, or tournament format suggestions.
4. You have feedback on broadcasting matches for such a tournament.
5. If you aren't interested in something like this at all.

This is designed to be change of pace from the League, an opportunity to try new things out and expand the competitive Dominion scene to reach more people. If there's something in particular you'd like to see that would get you interested in playing competitive Dominion, let's hear it!

Hopefully in the near future there will be enough of a vision to move forward with a more concrete idea. Thanks for your feedback!

EDIT: a couple more details.

1. When the time comes for another step forward, I'll make sure to PM anyone who responded here saying they were interested to direct them towards that. The next step may not be a signup, it kind of depends on how things go with scheduling and the League.

2. In my brain, the vision is that nobody who helps run the thing will be able to play, and that I'll be able to moderate it all myself with the help of some software that I'll write. I want everything to be totally transparent so the software will be open-source. Help with setup and commentary and that stuff is one thing, but in terms of actually moderating the tournament (settling disputes, running the script, etc.) I want to prevent potential conflicts of interest.
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gkrieg13

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Re: Online tournament format ideas
« Reply #1 on: April 25, 2016, 12:58:48 am »
+1

I would be in to play and would also like to try commentating.

Super excited for this!
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Re: Online tournament format ideas
« Reply #2 on: April 25, 2016, 02:08:13 am »
+1

I have a reddit account but reddit is cancerous so I'll reply here.

I could commentate. I could also play if the tournament mostly happens on one or two days, but that doesn't sound like the case so I probably don't want to play.
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Re: Online tournament format ideas
« Reply #3 on: April 25, 2016, 05:42:03 am »
+1

I only have one immediate thought, which is that it's worth keeping in mind the monthly subscription model that is upcoming for online Dominion play. 
This is something I'm sure the League will have to deal with soon - the fact that it's a 5-week cycle means people who want to play will probably have to buy two months where they might really only want one.
To save yourself future trouble I would suggest that whatever the format, it is set up in such a way as to take up either a very short space of time (<1 week) or a whole number of months.  I can see casualish participants being put off, otherwise.
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Re: Online tournament format ideas
« Reply #4 on: April 25, 2016, 06:13:07 am »
+1

I'm interested, so please keep me posted (I do not have a reddit account) :)..

I'm usually pretty torn between wanting to play a lot of Dominion and not wanting to play Dominion at predetermined times, so I actually like that there are breaks between seasons. I would hence prefer a format that does not get squeezed into these breaks. Other than that, it seems you have some very decent ideas going on already!
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Re: Online tournament format ideas
« Reply #5 on: April 25, 2016, 09:15:23 am »
+1

I'd potentially be interested, particularly if it was less of a time commitment than Dominion League.
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dedicateddan

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Re: Online tournament format ideas
« Reply #6 on: April 25, 2016, 04:16:08 pm »
+1

Tournaments are cool and more tournaments is great!

I like the idea of playing a bunch of matches over the course of a day or a couple of days to complement the play options the league offers
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Re: Online tournament format ideas
« Reply #7 on: April 25, 2016, 07:00:36 pm »
+3

I am interested.

If you're looking for our input regarding the structure, why not just do what we did for that other thing?  That seemed fair and fun.  I don't see a need to digress from that structure, or reinvent the wheel.
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AdamH

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Re: Online tournament format ideas
« Reply #8 on: April 25, 2016, 07:36:53 pm »
0

why not just do what we did for that other thing?  That seemed fair and fun.  I don't see a need to digress from that structure, or reinvent the wheel.

Partially to appeal to a different audience. Partially to encourage commentary to exist on more matches. The goals I had laid out involve something new that nobody has done before.

I mean, people liked that thing, and we can do that thing some day. The thing I want to do is different from what has been done before, like a fresh start.
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AdamH

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Re: Online tournament format ideas
« Reply #9 on: April 28, 2016, 12:09:12 pm »
0

So I think I'm going to go with the simplest format to start off with. I've started a new sub-reddit for hosting this tournament. Here's the post outlining the format of this first tournament in probably much more detail than what is necessary. I'll quote that post below for your convenience.

I'll take feedback on this for a while, and once it's polished I'll coordinate with the League mods to see about scheduling, then we'll start accepting signups and building the place where commentators can get the resources they need.

So yeah here's the post. Suggestions are welcome for the next couple of days.

Quote from: reddit
Hi. So you made it here!

In this thread I want to take the generic ideas and goals discussed elsewhere and turn them into a tournament structure we can work with. Feedback is welcome at this point, as this isn't final, but by the time this thread has done its job, we'll have something concrete enough that we can go ahead and start making a tournament.

I: Match structure

A "match" is defined as two people playing games of Dominion until one of three results is reached for each player: win/loss, or tie. If one of these results hasn't happened yet, just play some more games of Dominion until that changes! Any changes to these rules are acceptable provided all players agree to all changes, and a valid match result is still produced; in the event that an agreement can't be reached, please follow the rules in this section.

Each game of Dominion should be played with randomly generated kingdoms with no bias for or against specific cards. All cards available should be used to select the kingdoms for play. All games of Dominion should be played online with the point counter enabled; if one player should go first in a game, it may be required to restart games until the correct player is going first, so it is advised that you play unrated games if such a situation is possible.

A: If a tie is an acceptable result for the match, the structure of the match will be four games of Dominion. Ensure that each player goes first in exactly two of the games. For each game, a win will give 1 point, a tie 0.5 points, and a loss 0 points. At the end of four games, a player with more than 2 points will win the match, a player with less than 2 points will lose the match, and the match will be a tie if both players have exactly 2 points. If after three games, one player has more than 2 points, it is not required to play the final game (but you can if you want to).

B: If a tie is not an acceptable result for the match, players will play "first to three wins." Randomly determine who will go first in the first game, and alternate first player for subsequent games, regardless of game results. Continue playing games until one player has won three games (ties do not count towards this total at all, not even for a half point or anything; wins are all that matter). In high-profile matches (such as the tournament finals or semi-finals) this may be extended to four or five wins.

Once again, variations on this structure are acceptable as long as all players agree to them. For example, players could choose to exclude one or more cards from all of their games (no Cultist or Rebuild games or whatever), or perhaps they could choose to play first to two wins instead of three wins if they don't have much time to play. In any case, as long as all players agree and a valid match result is produced, changes to this match structure are just fine. This format serves as a recommendation for how to play matches as well as a default in case an agreement cannot be reached to change it.

II: Tournament structure

The tournament will consist of one or more "Swiss rounds" followed by an "elimination round." I'll define each of these and then explain how they go together.

A: A Swiss round will feature play similar to a Swiss tournament. Players will be matched up with other players with a similar tournament score (more details on exactly how these matchups will work later) and play a ties-allowed match every week. A win, draw, or loss will be worth a scaling amount of points depending on the number of previous Swiss rounds played:

Previous Swiss rounds played -> (Win, Draw, Loss)
Zero -> (2, 1, 0)
One -> (4, 2, 0)
Two -> (6, 3, 0)
etc...

After four weeks (or three weeks in some circumstances), some percentage of the lowest-scoring participants will be eliminated from the tournament while the rest will move on to the next round. This percentage will vary depending on the number of players in a given Swiss round, but it will always be between 25% and 75%, and will be kept as close to 50% as possible.

Tournament scores will not be erased between rounds.

If all players in a match have been mathematically eliminated from advancing past the current Swiss round, it is not required that they play their match. By signing up for the tournament, you are committing to play all matches you are assigned unless this is the case.

For example, say there are 55 players who enter the tournament. We could say the top 32 finishers would advance (about 58% of entrants), so then everybody plays 4 matches. We'll take the top 32 players in the rankings after these matches are finished, plus anyone else with the same tournament score as people who made it (this will usually be 4, but since ties are allowed, that is not guaranteed, maybe it will be 3.). So we'll end up with at least 32 players, and maybe a few more.

Bringing extra players along is fine until the last Swiss round, before the elimination round. In that case we'll need an exact number of players to advance (8 or 16) -- Solkoff scores will not be used to determine who will advance, but rather an extra tiebreaker match will be played (Solkoff scores are only used for seeding). In some circumstances, this will require 3-player games of Dominion, though this will try to be avoided.

B: The elimination round will be a single-elimination, bracket-style setup. Players will be seeded into a bracket (based on their cumulative score from the previous part of the tournament) and will play no-tie matches; once a player loses once here they are eliminated from the tournament. This will begin when there are 8 or 16 players left, depending on how large the entry field is (64 or less -> final 8; 65 or more -> final 16). The winner of this final round will be declared the winner of the tournament.

III: Commentary

I'd like to put together a pool of commentators with the idea that once a match is scheduled, players can post somewhere if they'd like to have people provide commentary for it. It will be possible to provide commentary and play, but you may not commentate a match that's in your division. The first step towards this is just collecting a list of people who want to do commentary -- if you want to pair up with another person, that's fine, or people who are available can just commentate and pair up with whoever else can be there. You don't have to sign up in pairs or anything like that.

The hope for this structure is that by the third or fourth week of a Swiss round, it will be clear which matches are the "do or die" matches, where players must win or else they will be eliminated -- these matches should be the more exciting matches to broadcast and should give all willing players the opportunity to have at least one exciting match of theirs broadcast during the tournament.

IV: Length/Scheduling

Depending on what the League wants to do, this tournament can be broken up into segments: each Swiss round can be played separately if necessary and the elimination round can easily take place during a League season as there will be very few participants. Once this format has been finalized, the League will be polled to see if they want to adjust their schedule, and shortly after that, signups for this will be open.
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Marcory

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Re: Online tournament format ideas
« Reply #10 on: April 28, 2016, 12:48:56 pm »
+2

If your goal is to welcome new players, what about limiting the expansions you use, especially in the early rounds? I.e., the opening rounds could use the Big Box sets, then add Intrigue/Seaside/Hinterlands, saving Cornucopia, Dark Ages, and Adventures for the last rounds when players are more likely to be experts and thus familiar with the rest of the cards.
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Re: Online tournament format ideas
« Reply #11 on: April 28, 2016, 12:53:02 pm »
0

what about limiting the expansions you use

Is there a way to do this online?
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Re: Online tournament format ideas
« Reply #12 on: April 30, 2016, 07:40:05 pm »
0

You have some nice ideas, but I really don't like reddit. Also, I don't think organizing a tournament there can work out that well...

Why not at least BGG or something?
« Last Edit: April 30, 2016, 07:43:11 pm by assemble_me »
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AdamH

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Re: Online tournament format ideas
« Reply #13 on: April 30, 2016, 09:09:40 pm »
0

Reddit has been more active than BGG from my experience. It's not ideal, but there has already been a lot of interest. If things go well and a better place is needed, I'll create something appropriate. The software used to create these forums is free.

And I want to organize an online tournament, I'm going to try doing things that I think will work. And I'm not going to do it here.

I'm posting here and trying to cooperate with the league mods not because it makes me happy, but because I think people here might be interested. I'm willing to make a lot of adjustments to reflect what the community wants, but those things I just said aren't really negotiable. I realize there will be people who won't participate because it's not here...

...but there are already a ton of people on reddit, who have never come here, who have said they're interested.

F.DS is not the center of the universe when it comes to Dominion. The universe is quite nice, actually.
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AdamH

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Re: Online tournament format ideas
« Reply #14 on: April 30, 2016, 09:26:42 pm »
0

Let me be clear: I'm acutely aware of this forum's tendencies to bring up things that are unrelated to the topic and completely derail the thread. While there are many things that people may want to talk about here other than providing me feedback, I'm not going to respond to them. You're welcome to send me PMs if you want to talk about something else. If the thread gets too far away from this topic, of course there's nothing I can do about that, but just realize that what will happen is that F.DS will not get to have its voice represented because I'll just stop following this thread.
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Marcory

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Re: Online tournament format ideas
« Reply #15 on: May 04, 2016, 11:35:57 pm »
+1

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Re: Online tournament format ideas
« Reply #16 on: May 06, 2016, 06:16:34 pm »
0

what about limiting the expansions you use

Is there a way to do this online?

Can't you limit sets in the randomizer?

http://forum.makingfun.com/showthread.php?7771-Kingdom-Randomizer-and-Deck-Builder

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