New Tournament Format

post by 501st Big Mike; edited by CupcakeTrap

Poll – Part 2: Results

In the second part of the tournament polls, the community overwhelmingly voted in support of the new Split Format. It had almost a 2/3 majority from the community as a whole.

I also sorted the responses into groups, based on things such as rank and how many arcs participated in, to see if any voting trends occurred. I was worried that perhaps lower ranked players had voted against the Split Format, as it would cause them to be more excluded from the 2nd week of the tournament, but were simply being blocked out from higher skill tiers voting in favor of it and having more faction players. It turned out that both high ranked and lower ranked players supported the Split Format, and the lower ranked players actually had the most support of it.

I am not sure why the Split Format was so popular for the lower ranked players; maybe it was because they don’t find having to play against Diamonds and Platinums in such a high stakes situation, or perhaps they liked the idea that if they performed really well they could send their faction straight to the finals. Whatever the reason may be, the strong support from the community as a whole seems to be reason enough to switch to the Split Format.

Split Format now in Effect

With the voting heavily supporting the Split Format, I am going to make it the new official tournament format in future arcs. The Split Format turns Tournaments into two-weekend events:

• Preliminaries: The first weekend consists entirely of Silver and Bronze matches. The top faction from this weekend gets an automatic “bye” into the Finals.
• Semi-Finals: The first day of the second weekend features the three factions who did not get a “bye” competing for placement into the final round.
• Finals: The second day of the second weekend is a final set of matches between the winner of the Preliminaries and the team that advanced from the Semi-Finals.

However, I am concerned that the Preliminaries being made up of Silver-and-Bronze-only matches could result in a large number of forfeits, due to the inability to underfill lower ranks. This is why I am adding the condition that, if the Preliminaries end up having a large number of forfeits, we will revert back to the old system.

Since the next arc won’t start for a while, we’ll have some time to work out the details of the new format. We might decide to hold a tournament during intermission to test out how the Split Format will work, but that will take some prep work before hand.

How the Split Format Will Work

I mentioned how the Split Format would run in a previous post, but I’ll explain it again here to make sure there aren’t any parts that need clarity.

The Split format takes a tournament and divides it up into two weeks of matches. The first week being the Preliminaries, and the second week consisting of the Semi-Finals and the Finals.

The Preliminaries

The Preliminaries will be organized much like featured matches, except it will only include games with silver and bronze players. Sign ups will be posted, and a schedule will be made. Each faction will play every other faction 1 time, for a total of 6 games, assuming it is a 4 faction arc (arcs with different numbers of factions will have different numbers of games played), but each faction will still end up playing every other faction 1 time.

Half of the games will be played on Saturday, and the other half will be played on Sunday. Any ties that occur will be resolved on Sunday after normally scheduled matches are completed. The faction that takes first place will receive a “bye” into the finals (and so would not need to compete in the Semi-Finals). The second place faction would win any ties that it is involved in during the Semi-Finals.

The Semi-Finals

The Semi-Finals will be the first day of the second week of the tournament. It will have premade, player organized teams with a skill tier format of HHGGG. The faction that won the Preliminaries would need to submit a team as well for the finals. This does not mean a faction should always try to get two high tier summoners and three gold tier summoners; if a faction has players in silver or bronze that play better than their gold players, they should feel free to add them to their team. Underfilling is always allowed.

The faction that wins the Semi-Finals will go to the Finals, to face the faction that won the Preliminaries.

The Finals

The Finals will be the last day of the tournament. They will be a best-of-five between the faction that won the Preliminaries, and the faction that won the Semi-Finals. The same teams submitted during the Semi-Finals will be used, but captains are still able to make any roster changes they wish, so long as the team remains compliant. The first to win three games in the set will emerge victorious as the ultimate victor of the tournament.

Overfill Rule

There are a few things concerning the overfill rule that I want to clear up. These are merely statements about how rule will be applied; the rule itself hasn’t changed.

The rule states that a faction can use it once per day of a Tournament. However, this was stated before we had the Preliminaries, where each faction plays 3 matches over the course of 2 days. This is the equivalent of a faction playing 1 day of featured matches, in terms of numbers of games. Which is why a faction will only be allowed to use the overfill rule once during the Preliminaries.