I was just curious what the general consensus is on the new method of scoring. I kind of like the idea of getting more points if I do well in a game, but a player paired up with a weaker player/squad would probably get more points, and hence have a better score later in case of a tie, right? Could it also influence squad building just a little, making that big expensive Han an even bigger target? I'm pretty new to any kind of tournament scene, so thoughts/ideas/pros/cons in the discussion are welcome!

You're absolutely right. How one wins is now more important than ever! Of course this will change the metagame. Swarms will be more competitive than ever.

I've done some tests and compared the ranking of the tournaments I've organized with the new tie breakers. I was pretty disappointed when I saw the runner up of my last tournament ending up 4th, whereas his only defeat was against the tournament champion

In my opinion, FFG should have kept SoS as the first tie breaker, and choose Margin of Victory as the second.

I'm very happy about it. You can search through the history and find the numerous posts where I've complained about the tie breaking procedures in general (and almost always specific to the fact that it was too easy to end up in a true tie according to the official TBs).

The way the swiss tourney works is by pairing you with folks that have won the same number of games that you have. The problem with the old style was that if you lost in round 1 to the world champ, and then won every other game, you were pretty much screwed in SoS. Compared to someone who won the first 5 rounds, and then lost to the same world champ in the 6th and final, he had something like a 70% chance of having a greater SoS than you, even though you both with 5-1 and lost to the same person. That ain't right.

Now, if you're a good player, but in that same scenario get randomly paired against the world champ, and give him a run for his money, and walk away with a MoV of 75... and then you win your next 5 games... the person that won the first 5 and then lost to the world champ in the 6th may only have a MoV of 50, in which case, you have an advantage for beating him in the tie breaker. You are no longer punished for playing the WC in the first round.

But you do make a fair point. In that above example, you'd be playing lower caliber players throughout round 2-6 than the other mythical guy that lost in R6. So he's much more likely to have closer games than you are (assuming you two are of equal skill level, which is low top tier). So, in that example, playing the WC in round 1 will actually help your MoV. Herm... I guess I'll have to think on it a bit more before I decide whether I like it or not.

That said, it still doesn't provide a robust round 2 tie breaker. There will still be plenty of people with 5 points and a full 200 MoV, and a SoS of 0 (and even an oSoS of 5)... But there will be less of those at least.

TL;DR: SOS is a terrible tiebreaker system in general, unless you have pre-existing rankings for everyone involved in the tournament. International chess tournaments can do that, but X-wing can't. X-wing should never have adopted SOS in the first place, and I am very, very glad to see it gone.

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There's really no comparison. The new margin of victory rules mean your tiebreaker score (and therefore tournament standing) depend only on stuff that happened in your actual games, as opposed to what happens to your opponents when they play other people.

To approach it from a different standpoint: suppose everyone's W/L record is a reasonable estimate of their skill, but there's some wiggle room in it--some error. In that case SOS, because it's directly related to the W/L records of your opponents, has the sum of all the individual errors.

But wait, there's more! Because Swiss matches people with the same records, players in the middle have records that are more error-prone than players on either end (because Reasons, which I won't go into here). Accordingly, the error in SOS--already much larger than the error in any individual player's record--also tends to accumulate more error for players in the middle than for players on the ends of the distribution. And that means that we actually have more confidence in the SOS of a 5-0 player (who doesn't need a tiebreaker to know whether or not she's headed to the finals) than in the SOS of the 3-2 player who's on the bubble.

And there's actually still more. Suppose you and I both have 3-2 records, and both played someone who went 0-2 in the first two rounds. But my opponent was from just across town and had better things to do with his afternoon, while your opponent is here from out of state and is staying until the bitter end. My guy drops, adding nothing to my SOS, while your guy picks up a win in the second-to-last round and adds another 5 to your SOS. I fall behind you in tiebreakers, for reasons that have little to do with anything that happened at my table, or your table, or anyone's table.

This will really help flushing out the larger tournaments, especially the drops, which is what Vorpal Sword touched on. Smaller tournaments, I could see it go either way, but with very larger Regionals and above....those drops really punish people who might be on the bubble of making the cut, especially if they have been wiping their opponents out, but weren't getting SoS points from drops.

We were just having this same conversation at the Atlanta Regional this weekned (along with the idea of raising the modified win difference back up to 33pts).

This will really help flushing out the larger tournaments, especially the drops, which is what Vorpal Sword touched on. Smaller tournaments, I could see it go either way, but with very larger Regionals and above....those drops really punish people who might be on the bubble of making the cut, especially if they have been wiping their opponents out, but weren't getting SoS points from drops. We were just having this same conversation at the Atlanta Regional this weekned (along with the idea of raising the modified win difference back up to 33pts).

With the new tiebreaker, keeping the modified win at 12 points makes a lot of sense. I'm not sure it did with SOS, but we don't have to live in that silly world anymore.

Margin of victory should be a tie breaker AFTER SOS! And here is why:

Bob, Jim, and Ron all have 10 points and are heading into the final round.

Bob gets paired with Jim.

Ron gets paired with a scrub player that has 5 points He got paired down because there are no more 10 point players.

Bob and Jim have a great game and Bob wins. Bob destroys all 100 points of Jim and Jim destroys 88 points, so Bob's MOV is a whopping 112.

Now Ron whips on the scrub player and totally destroys him, and the scrub player destroyed nothing. So Ron has 200 MOV.

According to the new rules Ron will beat Bob, which is total CRAP!

According to the new rules Ron will beat Bob, which is total CRAP!

If he was within 87 points of Bob's MoV going into the final round, which is why this system is better. Both Ron and Bob's performances across the whole tournament will be what determines which of them get into the finals, not which of them had better luck in the pairings.

Margin of victory should be a tie breaker AFTER SOS! And here is why:

Bob, Jim, and Ron all have 10 points and are heading into the final round.

Bob gets paired with Jim.

Ron gets paired with a scrub player that has 5 points He got paired down because there are no more 10 point players.

Bob and Jim have a great game and Bob wins. Bob destroys all 100 points of Jim and Jim destroys 88 points, so Bob's MOV is a whopping 112.

Now Ron whips on the scrub player and totally destroys him, and the scrub player destroyed nothing. So Ron has 200 MOV.

According to the new rules Ron will beat Bob, which is total CRAP!

So Bob, Jim, and Ron have each won exactly one more game than Ron's opponent, but they're not scrubs and the opponent is? You're saying that if the fundamental assumption of Swiss pairing is violated--if two players with disparate skill levels are matched with one another--MOV breaks down. And you're right, but how often does that happen after the first couple of rounds, and why would it be the case often enough to skew the results overall? After all, Ron has a higher tiebreaker score than Bob for this round, but they have at least two rounds before this and possibly a few more to go.

Sounds more fair to me.

In your scenerio why should rob lose due to the fact he has to play a weaker player?Again in your scenerio maybe Jim should have done a better job and won his game if he didn't want to be beat out by Rob.

I suppose you also think it's fair if you play John in your first game but for reasons John leaves after his next game, and misses out on two games.

Like stated above.

The example you give sounds more like sour grapes and being a sore loser imo.

This way sounds more fair.

I never understood why should a player be punished during tie breaking because he was paired up with a weaker opponent?

He maybe one of the best players there but due to tie breaking rules his SoS sucks because 2 out of 4-5 opponents didn't win any of their games.

At least this way its about how well you do in your games, not how well someone else did in their games which effects of you advance or not

According to the new rules Ron will beat Bob, which is total CRAP!

If he was within 87 points of Bob's MoV going into the final round, which is why this system is better. Both Ron and Bob's performances across the whole tournament will be what determines which of them get into the finals, not which of them had better luck in the pairings.

Another issue with MOV will be collusion, which is illegal, but very hard to prove. MOV SUCKS!

Or maybe people don't understand how swiss tournaments should be ran and calculated. Which is what I see here. I have seen people run swiss tournaments of 3 rounds with over eight players, which is totally wrong.

In swiss when you have 8 or less you play 3 rounds.

9-16 play 4 rounds

17-32 play 5 rounds

33-64 play 6 rounds

If you played somewhere that actually knew how to run a swiss tournament, then you would understand why MOV is a bad first tie breaker.

According to the new rules Ron will beat Bob, which is total CRAP!

If he was within 87 points of Bob's MoV going into the final round, which is why this system is better. Both Ron and Bob's performances across the whole tournament will be what determines which of them get into the finals, not which of them had better luck in the pairings.

This system is better? How? The new way rewards people for getting paired down to lesser players. I think the real problem is that people don't understand strength of schedule. Personally I think MOV should go into figuring SOS. Just pray that you always get paired down to lesser players.

Another issue with MOV will be collusion, which is illegal, but very hard to prove. MOV SUCKS!

Given that being matched against lesser players should be avoided, and thus will happen rarely anyway, I do not think the problem is as bad as you claim. Besides, why should a player be punished because of a quirk on the pairings? Why should someone else be rewarded because his nearest rival got hit by a quirk on the pairings?

With MoV your destiny is in your own hands, rather than with the luck of the draw. You want to get into the finals? Win your games and get a stronger MoV than your opponents.

Happen rarely??! Really?!

The only time this won't happen is when the tournament has exactly 4, 8,16,32,64,128,256,512.... Every other time someone will be paired up or paired down.

Plus if a swiss tourney is done correctly, there will be no luck of the draw!

Margin of victory should be a tie breaker AFTER SOS! And here is why:

Bob, Jim, and Ron all have 10 points and are heading into the final round.

Bob gets paired with Jim.

Ron gets paired with a scrub player that has 5 points He got paired down because there are no more 10 point players.

Bob and Jim have a great game and Bob wins. Bob destroys all 100 points of Jim and Jim destroys 88 points, so Bob's MOV is a whopping 112.

Now Ron whips on the scrub player and totally destroys him, and the scrub player destroyed nothing. So Ron has 200 MOV.

According to the new rules Ron will beat Bob, which is total CRAP!

You're right! Any system that would allow this is total CRAP!

So what happens with SoS if Ron's first-round opponent was a good one who wins the rest of his games, but Bob's first-round opponent loses everything? Or even worse, pulls a table flip and walks out? Ron ends up with a dramatically better SoS and beats Bob.

So, uhm, pretty much the exact same last-round situation could result in exactly the same thing under SoS. Just a different reason for it. Most Bobs, given the choice between dropping out of first because Ron had a better final round game and their first-round opponent dropped, would gladly congratulate Ron on a good game.

Happen rarely??! Really?!

The only time this won't happen is when the tournament has exactly 4, 8,16,32,64,128,256,512.... Every other time someone will be paired up or paired down.

Plus if a swiss tourney is done correctly, there will be no luck of the draw!

Being paired against someone who has one fewer wins is not a guaranteed victory.

And there's plenty luck of the draw. The first round is entirely random. It takes at least the second round, and sometimes the third, for that to settle down.

I think I agree with you that someone in this conversation doesn't understand how Swiss and SoS works... but I'm not sure it's who you think it is.

This is obviously a better system

I think frydaddy is just trolling

Not trolling. Can't wait to hear all the crying from the people who will get beat out of the prize pool by someone who got paired down to a lesser opponent.

The chess community is the one who came up with this system and they base their tie breaks on some sort of strength of schedule. But hey, what do they know they just invented the system.

This Saturday we will have our first tourney under the new rules and I'll let you all know the results.

Not to mention this is allot easier to calculate, which means its easier/possible to catch mistakes...

Old system works well for cardgames, like MTG, but for X-wing new system is much better, as it rewards you for your effort, and makes staling tactics less viable, as you need to not only win, but kill a lot, not fly around and hide.

Here is a simple 8 man tourney of 3 rounds that I made up. Where I used MOV to calculate SOS. Just a simple average of opponents MOV.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8btUenBwzQeNTFlYXBoSjJ2dEk/preview?pli=1

Here is the placing for the top 4

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8btUenBwzQeMlZXbzJWTERfZHc/preview?pli=1

Here are the differences between players G and D and why MOV by itself SUCKS.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8btUenBwzQeMVBzTHZNaDFWSWs/preview?pli=1

if the links to the pics don't work, let me know and I'll try something different

Not to mention this is allot easier to calculate, which means its easier/possible to catch mistakes...

And this is why I think it was changed. People couldn't grasp how strength of schedule works and this is a lot easier.

Contrived example is contrived.

And rampaging troll is rampaging. Vorpal already pointed out why Swiss works better for chess than here. You don't actually want a discussion, you just want to scream and vent.

Not to mention this is allot easier to calculate, which means its easier/possible to catch mistakes...

And this is why I think it was changed. People couldn't grasp how strength of schedule works and this is a lot easier.

Oh that is a load of bull. People can't grasp SoS, which most gaming systems use as a tiebreaker of some sort? Including even some professional sports. And every other FFG game, some with more complicate scoring systems then X-wing. You are grasping at straws with that one.

Contrived example is contrived.

And rampaging troll is rampaging. Vorpal already pointed out why Swiss works better for chess than here. You don't actually want a discussion, you just want to scream and vent.

You've got to be kidding me with this napkin math of yours. How do you expect anyone to follow that?

Let's forget for a moment that you have 4 separate 100-0 victories over the event, which in and of itself invalidates your example as indicative of an actual event.

How the hell did player D score a margin of victory of 260 points? 100+60 does not equal 260. Please go check player A's score since you didn't add that up correctly either.

That's suppose to prove that MOV sucks? Only thing it proves is that you didn't bother to check your math and went off half cocked.