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FFT Arena Season One Discussion Thread

Started by Eternal248, April 29, 2012, 04:20:29 am

formerdeathcorps

We're awarding ONE bye to the team that wins 4 matches with the minimal number of losses.  Recalling both S3-5, the ultimate champion was precisely that team.
The alternative is giving SIXTEEN byes while insisting that teams that are 1-1 should be matched with teams that are 0-1.  Experience from the past few seasons shows that many of the 0-1 teams have basic team errors.  In fact, only a handful of the teams starting out as 0-1 are actually good enough to make it to the Semifinals of the Losers' Bracket (much less any higher).
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The dogmas of every era are nothing but the fantasies of those in power; their dreams are our waking nightmares.

iamBQB

If you make round 5 of the winner's bracket a Round Robin and send the two losers to Round 5 for the loser's bracket you'd be able to run the whole thing with no byes and only 2 extra matches.

The Damned

(As soon as I saw Eternal put this up, I started wondering how much it would get filled before the tournament gets started....)

If "we" need an 48th team, then can't "we" just use a slightly modified version of whatever the team of that one the last (and only?) ARENA tournament was? I mean, I'm all for letting someone else join late, especially considering how much I procrastinated/wasn't taking it seriously, but "we" can only wait so long before the delay starts to become detrimental.

However, I kinda agree with Dol that a semifinal bye, at least one that's planned out from the get-go, is rather...excessive even given to the team with a minimal number of losses. I'll admit that it unfortunately might be the best option to go with, though.

Quote from: Barren on April 29, 2012, 10:41:07 am
my choice for a 48th player would be RavenOfRazgriz

his team: Y U SO DERP


Such self-hatred on your part, Barren.

Then again, having a team more boring than my own would make me look less like an asshole, even if Raven's is doubtless better made ultimately.
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CT5Holy

I have 44 teams on the spreadsheet. Some of the people who reserved slots didn't send teams in.
Winner of the 1st FFT 1.3 AI Tourney

Barren

Quote from: CT5Holy on April 29, 2012, 02:20:36 pm
I have 44 teams on the spreadsheet. Some of the people who reserved slots didn't send teams in.


Did you send them PMs alerting them that they have until tonight to submit their teams?
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CT5Holy

Ok, I've given them an extra 18 hours. Hopefully we can get 48.
Winner of the 1st FFT 1.3 AI Tourney

Pierce

Quote from: iamBQB on April 29, 2012, 01:15:49 pm
If you make round 5 of the winner's bracket a Round Robin and send the two losers to Round 5 for the loser's bracket you'd be able to run the whole thing with no byes and only 2 extra matches.

Personally I'm all for this idea. 16 byes in the first round seems a little iffy, being that it would mean a third of the competitors are eliminated that quickly. Just my two cents.
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Xeno

Quote from: Pierce on April 29, 2012, 03:26:57 pm
Personally I'm all for this idea. 16 byes in the first round seems a little iffy, being that it would mean a third of the competitors are eliminated that quickly. Just my two cents.

I second that.
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Gaignun

April 29, 2012, 05:43:23 pm #28 Last Edit: April 29, 2012, 05:49:26 pm by Gaignun
Challonge's bracket distribution is competent.  This is an application that generates brackets for real tournaments (as in tournaments that people pay money to set up and host).  It doesn't matter how uneven the number of entries are; the bracket gets balanced out leading up to the championship, meaning that there are no byes at semi-finals, quarter-finals, and so on.  The creation of dummy teams isn't necessary.

Byes in the early rounds are perfectly acceptable.  The idea is to seed the stronger players so that those who don't get byes have at least one match in which to stand a chance of winning.  This is not unfair to the weaker teams that turn out to be strong, as they'll win their first match without problem and proceed to the second set where the seeded players are.  As we haven't done pools, we do not know exactly which teams are strong, but we can go by past results.  For example, I'm aware that fdc puts a lot of time into team design.  We would seed him so that he doesn't crush the dreams of an ill-conceived team in the first set.  The team's dreams can be broken after it wins its first set and meets him in the second, but then it will at least have been able to enjoy a minimum of three matches (two in winner's bracket, and one in loser's) as opposed to two, which I believe is what really matters.

Byes are common.  A national fighting game tournament held just over this weekend gave a reigning champion a bye all the way to the semi-finals so he wouldn't destroy the competition.

The past results we'd go by is season 5.  This would mean that newcomers won't be seeded, as their teams are yet unproven.  This is a cruel reality, but a better one than letting the veterans thrash them in the first set.

Barren

Just to let everyone know the link I provided earlier was only an sample bracket, its not legit so no worries. Gaignun and I agreed that the bracket will be divided between veterans and novices/moderate Arena players so that way everyone can have a fair fight.

Hopefully in time we can get the actual bracket up and we can then determine which hosts will call what matches
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Fantactic1316

I like the Round Robin idea.

Also, I'm very excited to finally be participating in one of these. I've been watching the videos on Youtube for years, but never really kept a close enough watch on Hacktics to catch a chance to join in on the fun.

Best of luck to everyone! =D
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Dynablade

Byes are very very common in fighting games.

In fact, depending on how many other tournaments you place well at, you can get a bye all the way to Top 32 at EVO, widely considered to be the largest fighting game tournament in the world.

So yeah getting 16-17 people a bye in the first round is no problem, just as long as the scrubs (read: me) don't get thrown into the lion's den early.

FFMaster

QuoteThe past results we'd go by is season 5.  This would mean that newcomers won't be seeded, as their teams are yet unproven.  This is a cruel reality, but a better one than letting the veterans thrash them in the first set.


Completely disagree there. To me, that is saying we will seed people for SCII using the data from BW or SCI. Although similar in the very core, they have completely different metagames and balancing issues and different people will thrive in different metagames. IMO, either we seed using how player teams have been successful in the battles of the past few months, or we don't seed at all. Season 5 was using a completely different ruleset and a different patch, and Arena beta tourney was a clusterfuck and the game has changed a huge amount since then.
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Fanatic

April 29, 2012, 09:44:30 pm #33 Last Edit: April 29, 2012, 09:54:36 pm by Fanatic
Seeding... will probably be a clusterfuck no matter how it is done. Seeding by the amount of time spent around Arena might get you the closest, but by no means is it definitely fair. Veteran users might scrap together a quick, untested team while newbies might craft their first team as a modification of an already tested and proven team. Either way, you'll get a team that performs differently than what you would expect in that circumstance.

My suggestion would be to just run the first round of the winners bracket entirely random, regardless of how you set up the byes. On the other hand, I would make an effort to pair up the initial loser battles based on 1) whether the loser forced a third round or not in the first match and 2) how long or how close the match was. That way, you could pair struggling teams off against each other in the first losers round, after we all have had a chance to see them in action.

Ultimately, a struggling team will have to face off against a superior team at some point. Rather than try to anticipate this early, I would wait until I had seen each team in action to better judge it's capabilities.

But hell, it ain't my call. Whatever the plan ends up being, I will back it 100% - We're all here to have fun anyway!

EDIT: You know, on that note, you could just post all the teams before the brackets are set and then hold a giant voting session for the teams strength (you know - scale of 1 to 10, average out the votes, etc) and then create brackets based on the results. It'd be a bit of a hassle, but that would probably be the closest thing to a "fair" (note - I do not say "true," merely "fair") assessment of the strength of each team.
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Gaignun

I must apologise, then, as I haven't been keeping track of who has been successful in the practise battles.  Going through months of practise battles will set this tournament back by several days.  The number of entrants isn't equal to a power of two, so there must be seeds whether we like it or not.  Either somebody invests hours formulating some way of sorting seeds through a disorganised thread of practise battles, or we use what we can to get the tournament going.  We need to be sensitive to our hosts schedules, too.  Wiz, in particular, told me that he'd like to get through his matches quickly because he's got work.

We might very well not be able to achieve what seeding is meant to do, but seeding with a potentially bogus list will be no worse than seeding at random.

Quote from: FanaticOn the other hand, I would make an effort to pair up the initial loser battles based on 1) whether the loser forced a third round or not in the first match and 2) how long or how close the match was. That way, you could pair struggling teams off against each other in the first losers round, after we all have had a chance to see them in action.


I understand where you're coming from, Fanatic, but loser's brackets are structured to minimise scenarios where teams lose to the same team twice (once in the winner's, then again in the loser's).  Restructuring it will only increase the odds of this occuring.

dacheat

I think we either need to make it random or give the vets the benefit of the doubt in terms of seeding and move on.

FFMaster

Heh, what's the bet we will spend more time sitting and debating like a bunch of politicians instead of actually running the tournament?

Anyway, fdc's idea is sound except for the round robin, and I've already stated that to him. I absolutely hate arbitrary rulings to work out who advances if a draw happens. He originally suggested time spent to win, which would disadvantage defensive teams. Then he suggested using no. of units crystalled. But I still see it as a pretty horrible idea overall.

The problem is that 47 is a horrible number. The best idea I've got is to open submissions for 1 more team(first come, first served) and run Swiss for 8 groups of 6. knock out the bottom 16, and then run single elim for the rest of them. That or run with the 47 disregarding fairness....

Either way, this is going to be a clusterfuck.
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dacheat

April 29, 2012, 10:35:01 pm #37 Last Edit: April 29, 2012, 10:44:46 pm by dacheat
Quote from: FFMaster on April 29, 2012, 10:33:19 pmI absolutely hate arbitrary rulings to work out who advances if a draw happens. He originally suggested time spent to win, which would disadvantage defensive teams. Then he suggested using no. of units crystalled. But I still see it as a pretty horrible idea overall.


Why not just call it a draw and replay the game (not the match)?

EDIT: Forgot a word. Derp.

Eternal

I don't like the thought of determining based on old tournaments. This is season one of something totally new- a clean slate. The only fair way is to generate a totally random bracket. Whoever gets byes- get byes, whoever doesn't- doesn't. Should this happen again in Season Two, we can use Season One's results to determine byes.
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