Huge tournaments -- if you want a number, call it "over 100 participants" -- should not cut based on tie-breakers.

Take the Hoth Open, for example. 250+ players, I think?

It's absurd that any players with 35+ points (the equivalent of 7-2, with no modified wins) get sent home without making the cut.

A tourney that size almost certainly has players travelling from hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Basically, some players get sent home hundreds or thousands of miles ... based on tie-breakers. Ouch.

The tournament rules were just updated to allow cuts based on other criteria. Use those rules. "At the end of Day 1, any player with 20 or more points advances to Day 2. After three more games on Day 2, any player with 35 or more points makes it to the elimination rounds."

(Can you imagine being 4-2 on Day 1, coming back on Day 2, going 3-0 (all full wins) ... and still being sent home? Double-ouch.)

(Or even 6-0, all modified wins! 18 points gets you to Day 2, you go 3-0 and 600 MoV on Day 2, you're at 9-0 ... and you don't make the cut.

But don't pay too much attention to this part. This is just the dumbness of modified wins, when the real problem is doing cuts based on MoV at huge toournaments.)

I have always disliked the points systems for determining how far you progress. Wins vs Loss should be primary, then use tournament points for tie breakers. It's like saying your favorite sports team doesn't make it to the playoffs because they didn't score as many points over the season as another team did.

"A tourney that size almost certainly has players travelling from hundreds of thousands of miles away."

Of course they'd be bummed, they're probably already pissed at having to circumnavigate the globe several times just to be there.

Of course they'd be bummed, they're probably already pissed at having to circumnavigate the globe several times just to be there.

Or just plain pissed that they have to commute home, to the Moon.

If you lived on the moon I'm sure you'd just be happy to have been out for the weekend.

I agree, they should have just done the cut at 8-1 and made it clean. Top 6 would have been a bit weird tho.

Whatever system gets used, some players will make the final cut and some won't. That's the reality of a large tournament.

It's actually pretty easy to make the top cut - keep winning your games. Once you start losing... well... nothing's guaranteed from that point onwards.

I have always disliked the points systems for determining how far you progress. Wins vs Loss should be primary, then use tournament points for tie breakers. It's like saying your favorite sports team doesn't make it to the playoffs because they didn't score as many points over the season as another team did.

With an unlimited cut you might end up with top 128, or top 160, or top 173... what then? Events have a schedule to keep, you can tell players "sorry guys, so many people made the cut that we will need to take an extra day, or pull an all-nighter".

I have always disliked the points systems for determining how far you progress. Wins vs Loss should be primary, then use tournament points for tie breakers. It's like saying your favorite sports team doesn't make it to the playoffs because they didn't score as many points over the season as another team did.

Umm, the points are your win/loss record. Unless you dislike getting penalized for modified wins.

6-0 with 4 modified wins is 22 points.

5-1 full wins is 25 points.

Who is more deserving to advance?

6-0 with 4 modified wins is 22 points.

5-1 full wins is 25 points.

Who is more deserving to advance?

Depends on the strength of the games... 4 88-77 games and two 100-0 games... vs 6 88-76 games. The guy with the modified wins deserves to go... If only there was a system that tracked the closeness of each game independently of the final result... oh, wait... There is! So why isn't that being used besides for tie breakers? It's almost like at the end of the day, the guy that wins regardless of how we does it advances. And it doesn't matter how close the other guy was to winning - he didn't win.

Trust me, I've been on the receiving end of this multiple times - the worst was going 5-1 at a regional and missing the cut by 7 MoV last year. It SUCKS. But that just means there were 8 other people that won 5+ games, and won by larger margins than I did.

If you're discussing a full fledge change (which would add a round), then you say everyone who's 5-1 (or 6-2 or whatever the cut off is) makes the cut. Get rid of all tie breakers. And then seed the top 32 or whatever it is with a lot of empty seats, and give the top folks byes in the first round of elimination.

But at this point you're screwing over someone else who could have had that empty seat - and you're playing the extra round anyways - might as well let someone at 4-2 (or 5-3 or whatever) play in that empty seat... And then we have the problem allllll over again.

6-0 with 4 modified wins is 22 points.

5-1 full wins is 25 points.

Who is more deserving to advance?

The 5-1, because he was aggressive enough to meet the conditions of a full win.

As someone who was just there, I'm really glad it worked the way it did. All the judges worked their asses off this weekend and ran a tight ship. Games started and ended when they were supposed to. My only complaint was the tables from Thursday and Friday. They got some plywood to give us a flat surface today.

If you wanna see the flip side of how tournament can be run, Google PES run Magic events. We're lucky to have this thing run so clean.

6-0 with 4 modified wins is 22 points.

5-1 full wins is 25 points.

Who is more deserving to advance?

The 5-1, because he was aggressive enough to meet the conditions of a full win.

People mistake the fact that modified wins penalise people based entirely on arbitrary criteria and assign importance to those criteria. The reality is closer to the fact that the person who won 6 games is far more deserving, because he won close games when it mattered.

It's more like I know what the other option leads to. Timed wins should not be as good as Full wins. Of course, I disagree with how Full wins are awarded (even when they were more difficult to get), but it is the nature of the game.

It is the unfortunate reality that someone will always feel cheated and/or put at a disadvantage. The system is not designed to be perfectly fair. it is however designed to be as fair as possible within the context of a large tournament. One of the largest constraints is Time. If we did not have a time constraint there would be no need for a modified win conditional at all. However, a time constraint is necessary in order to complete the event without undue strain put upon the players based on the number of players, the venue, and the needs of life (work, family, etc.). In a effort to keep it as fair as possible, that time constraint should be consistent within the tournament format, not based on the local variables such as number of players, the needs of the venue, and other data points native to the particular event. This is why we have both the modified win conditional, the timed rounds, and the cut to top X players.

While it might not be perfectly fair, it does strive to be as fair as possible to as many people as possible. Does it have room for improvement? I'm sure it does, and i'm sure FFG thinks it does as well, they have shown us this with the consistent updates to the rules. While we, as players, enthusiasts, hobbiests, and competitors might not always agree with FFG, or each other. I do think it is important to remember that we all want the same thing. The most fair system as we can have within the constants of reality.



.... sorry i tend to ramble =P

Honestly I would rather reward modified losses than penalize modified winners.

Or you could not cut at all and just do total elimination with untimed games.

You might have to take a week off but it'd be fair.

no i'm not serious if you were wondering

6-0 with 4 modified wins is 22 points.

5-1 full wins is 25 points.

Who is more deserving to advance?

The 5-1, because he was aggressive enough to meet the conditions of a full win.

How do you know the 6-0 player wasn't also aggressive, just playing against tankier builds that were better able to withstand the damage?

Modified Wins are very nearly tie games. They aren't scored as high because there was less than one ship's points worth of differece, making it very difficult to say the player with the slight lead would have difinitively won- 3 battered Ties vs 2 battered B-wings/X-wings is so close as to come down to player skill and luck.

Now, we might be able to shrink the margin for modified wins if we used full partial points (That is, points for every point of damage done), but that would require a much more robust tournament software than FFG provides.

As far as making the cut to next round based on your w-l record, that's essentially what the "Advanced" tournament structure does- It lets all the X-1 players in (At least, that's the intent; I've heard there). However, since elimination works best with a round number, the system adds some X-2 players to give you a round number.

No matter what system you use some one is always going to feel like they are eating a **** sandwich.

I feel like the current system actually rewards players playing out the game rather than "oh hey I'm slighty ahead on points time to fly around the board and burn the clock."

I understand that there are players that will game the system, but those should be caught during the round by a judge. I can't tell you how many times, when playing a similar format of points=rank games in 40K, that I had all wins, but didn't progress to the final game because my fragile Dark Eldar army gave up more points, than the Necron army that lost 2 games did.

As to sports, I have as yet to see a team that did not lose a single game, or lost fewer games than another, not progress to the playoffs.

So I will ask a dumb question. Why not just use a single elimination bracket with straight up, win you advance, no points necessary. You could put in a ranking system for players so the two best players don't play in round one (think NCAA basketball tourney).

It's a little harder to rank people in this type of format where past games and statistics aren't meticulously recorded and gone over in high amounts of detail by numerous parties. As far as single elimination it would add a not insignificant number of rounds to crown a winner. Not to mention no one wants to lose their first game and know that are just out.