Man. It feels like I'm forced to bring my blaster with me to tournaments now. Can't have fun anymore.

Sigh. Not what I was hoping to see.

"We made a bad decision, and this is why it is correct".

Basically doubling down and compounding the error. If this is truly their stance, I think things will only get worse.

Intentional draws are a thing, ... where 'not losing' is more important than actually winning,

You shouldn't end up with a situation where two people taking a draw is better than actually playing the game.

Those two sentences cannot co-exist in the same universe. Which is why everything you said, and the Intentional Draw system, is 100% wrong.

For the record, I'm not against intentional draw. I understand why FFGS Organized Play implemented them.

But I do think they need to be tweaked. A draw that is played out over 75 minutes should be worth more than one that is not played at all. Just my opinion.

I also was not at Roanoke. I didn't see first hand what happened... But I know what fish smells like. 4 tables, 8 players... Hmmm.

Man. It feels like I'm forced to bring my blaster with me to tournaments now. Can't have fun anymore.

You and I have fun, Fuzz. So does 99% of the Puget Sound Xwing community.

Radio TCX posted a podcast today where they interview FFGOP's Wade Piche.

At around the 25 minute mark they start talking about the Hoth Open. There is no mention of the ID.

He did say the goal at Hoth was for 6-0 with all modified wins to make day two. And that 6 rounds is optimal in a single day.

After that they just talked about prizes. That everyone likes the cards the most of all prizes, that he reads the forums and looks to see what people say about OP and what OP items they want, and that "great surprises" are incoming.

I don't know when it was recorded, but at that time FFGOP was seemingly clueless to the ID issue. I hope they've all been reading the forums since.

@FFGOP: remove the victory points from Intentional Draws.

Amazing really.

A person that starts 4-0 has had a much tougher road(more often than not) then someone with an early loss. The 4-0 person has done nothing but face other undefeated people. Sounds tougher to me.

...except in round 1, where he played the guy that's 0-4 when he's 4-0. And the round where he was the 2-0 guy who got paired down against the 1-1 guy because there were an odd number of undefeated players that round. Or he took a bye in round 1 and didn't even have to play a game.

I love how this keeps being debated. I'm in the minority about this. IDs reward those people that won early and often. Which more often then not means that they played tougher competition.

Concerning this ruining casual monthly events at stores. My store doesn't have a cut and pays out by record not standings. So draws really hurt.

again, if you look at the Roanoke regional and SoS, several of the 3-2 had tougher schedules that the 4-1 that shut them out.

So this argument is not valid

Amazing really.

A person that starts 4-0 has had a much tougher road(more often than not) then someone with an early loss. The 4-0 person has done nothing but face other undefeated people. Sounds tougher to me.

...except in round 1, where he played the guy that's 0-4 when he's 4-0. And the round where he was the 2-0 guy who got paired down against the 1-1 guy because there were an odd number of undefeated players that round. Or he took a bye in round 1 and didn't even have to play a game.

Yet again with this "what if stuff". Large sample size will show you how rare that stuff is. Especially the being paired down thing. Since you'll get only one person a round being paired down. Considering the bye, that person won a tournament to get that. So the work was done.

I love how this keeps being debated. I'm in the minority about this. IDs reward those people that won early and often. Which more often then not means that they played tougher competition.

Concerning this ruining casual monthly events at stores. My store doesn't have a cut and pays out by record not standings. So draws really hurt.

again, if you look at the Roanoke regional and SoS, several of the 3-2 had tougher schedules that the 4-1 that shut them out.

So this argument is not valid

So let's look at this once we have a good amount of tournament data.

IDs reward those people that won early and often. Which more often then not means that they played tougher competition.

Fairly sure that's backwards mate.

1) Do ID ALWAYS punish those below? I can understand the frustration of people getting the shaft because those ranked above them ID, but if it's not going to affect them then why care?

2) Why not make it to where IDs are only acceptable when it doesn't affect those below?

Because if it has no impact you don't need Intentional Draws. If the game is inconsequential then one player can just concede.

The only purpose of Intentional Draws is to mutually secure your positions, which is why their addition in a game where drawing is so rare and very hard to do deliberately without being blindingly obvious is so baffling.

Amazing really.

A person that starts 4-0 has had a much tougher road(more often than not) then someone with an early loss. The 4-0 person has done nothing but face other undefeated people. Sounds tougher to me.

One of those players faced by the 4-0 player was 0-0 at the time, and another was 1-0.

Let's put it another way, with a thought experiment. Suppose player A joins a tournament that starts with 61 players. Player Z is also signed up, and she's the local champ: she wins an average of 70% of her tournament games, and even worse, Player A has a list that matches up badly against Player Z's list.

In one scenario, Player A and Player Z are randomly paired up in Round 1. That means Player A starts his day at 0-1, but wins four in a row so that at the start of Round 6, he's in 9th place with a 4-1 record. Almost everyone here is an experienced tournament players, and they all know or can find out that under normal circumstances there's likely to be at least one 4-2 player in the cut. More precisely, if there were no draws then any number of tournament points greater than 20 would make the cut. The 5-0 players and the 4-1 players in 3rd and 4th place think about it separately, call the marshal over, and ask for IDs.

That means at the end of Round 6, there will be 2 players with 26 tournament points, a total of 4 players with either 25 or 23 tournament points, and 2 players with 21 tournament points. Clearly, Player A has to win.

But consider the parallel universe where Player A instead avoids Player Z until Round 6. Player A looks at the standings and immediately offers an ID to Player Z, who accepts. Player A sighs with relief, knowing that as the #2 seed he won't have to face that matchup unless he makes the final table, and maybe not even then if someone gets lucky and knocks Z out.

In one universe, A's Round 6 is a very consequential game where he has to play his best or miss the cut; in the other universe, A spends Round 6 walking over to the nearby deli to get a sandwich and a Coke, and listens to an audiobook to unwind for half an hour. And the difference between those two universes is solely the random chance of being paired with Z early.

IDs reward those people that won early and often. Which more often then not means that they played tougher competition.

Fairly sure that's backwards mate.

1) Do ID ALWAYS punish those below? I can understand the frustration of people getting the shaft because those ranked above them ID, but if it's not going to affect them then why care?

2) Why not make it to where IDs are only acceptable when it doesn't affect those below?

Because if it has no impact you don't need Intentional Draws. If the game is inconsequential then one player can just concede.

The only purpose of Intentional Draws is to mutually secure your positions, which is why their addition in a game where drawing is so rare and very hard to do deliberately without being blindingly obvious is so baffling.

Amazing really.

A person that starts 4-0 has had a much tougher road(more often than not) then someone with an early loss. The 4-0 person has done nothing but face other undefeated people. Sounds tougher to me.

no one is arguing that someone that is 4-0 taking an ID in the last/5th round is bad. This would be solved by ID being worth 0 tourney points, to reward those that won early and future games being pointless to making the cut(but not securing rank of course)

[...] Which more often then not means that they played tougher competition [...]

I'm calling bull**** on that

I am not saying it's 100% of the time. But law of averages would imply that people at 4-1 preformed better as a group compared to those that were 3-2

Yes, someone at 4-1 performed better (theoretically) than someone that was 3-2. But someone at 4-2 (coming from 4-1) did NOT automatically perform better than someone at 4-2 (coming from 3-2). They both won and lost the same number of games.

Apparently being able to rig the final 8 positions is promoting the fair play experience. Nice to know.

LOL. I love how this is a big deal. Just win your matches and this won't affect you.

Man. It feels like I'm forced to bring my blaster with me to tournaments now. Can't have fun anymore.

You and I have fun, Fuzz. So does 99% of the Puget Sound Xwing community.

We should refer to our selves as the psx from now on.

Please stop propagating the factually incorrect statement that if everyone took ID every round there would be no cut.

Tiebreakers

If two or more players have the same number of tournament points, tiebreakers are used to determine each player’s standing within that group.

Tiebreakers are used in the following order until all players within that group have been given a standing.

• Head-to-head: Any player that has played and defeated all other players in the group is ranked above the other players in the group.

• Margin of Victory: The player with the highest Margin of Victory is ranked above all other players with the same number of tournament points. The player with the second highest Margin of Victory is ranked second among those players. The player with the third highest Margin of Victory is ranked third among those players, and so on.

• Strength of Schedule: A player’s strength of schedule is calculated by dividing each opponent’s total tournament points by the number of rounds that opponent has played, adding the results of each opponent played, and then dividing that total by the number of opponents the player has played. The player with the highest strength of schedule is ranked above all other players in the group not yet ranked. The player with the second-highest strength of schedule is ranked second among all players in the group not yet ranked, and so on.

• Random: If any players are still tied after all other tiebreakers have been applied, then those players are ranked in a random order below any players already ranked in the group.

Read the rules people.

Thanks

Kris

Apparently being able to rig the final 8 positions is promoting the fair play experience. Nice to know.

LOL. I love how this is a big deal. Just win your matches and this won't affect you.

Once again, initial pairings in X-wing are random. "Just win your matches" isn't a solution.

[...] Which more often then not means that they played tougher competition [...]

I'm calling bull**** on that

I am not saying it's 100% of the time. But law of averages would imply that people at 4-1 preformed better as a group compared to those that were 3-2

Yes, someone at 4-1 performed better (theoretically) than someone that was 3-2. But someone at 4-2 (coming from 4-1) did NOT automatically perform better than someone at 4-2 (coming from 3-2). They both won and lost the same number of games.

Correct, but the person that started 4-1 had a tougher road(more often than not). We can not use absolutes, but we also need to avoid basing our arguments on random less likely scenarios.

I dislike the rule, dislike its point value, dislike FFGOP's tone deaf response tonight ("we need it so things are fair for all!!" -- um, what??)... but I have a hard time seeing it becoming a regular thing where people still on the bubble get locked out. Am I missing something in the math?

It's pretty straightforward to figure out that, any time the entirety of players with a given number of tournament points is contained in the Top 8 in the next-to-last Swiss round, they will all have the opportunity to take a draw that would secure their Top 8 spot.

Without intentional draws, half of them could be displaced from the Top 8 (due to them losing the round, the next tier of tournament points winning the round, and MoV becoming the deciding factor).

So that's 3 players who'd have had a chance at the Top 8 being denied said chance.

Not only that, but there's tools to figure out what the tournament points of the Top 8 will look like, given the number of players in attendance. So for anyone who's earned more points than the lowest that will make the Top 8, they can safely draw (or even forfeit) their remaining matches without missing the cut. In practice, this will start to look like the undefeated players offering a draw from 2 rounds out instead of just the last round.

It will be a rare sight to see a tournament that doesn't have an intentional draw take place.

And the awful thing is, it stands a reasonable chance that FFG OP is going to look at that and say, "see? This is a rule you guys needed, look how often people use it!"

Would Conan the Barbarian take a draw and miss out on 3 goals of life.

First useful suggestion I have seen is decrease the size of each cut and give the top 2 players a bye in the first round of elimination games. Just about fixes things? Is that worth 2 people being excluded from the cut in every tourney?

I've defended this rule because it's a norm in other games but seriously I imaged it only applying to those already locked into the cut. Everyone involved in this players, judges and especially FFG should be ashamed of themselves. Colluding to deny others a chance in the cut by refusing to play is tragic. Two who made the cut had first round byes. Meaning they played a grand total of 4 matches and at least 1 only won 3 games to get there.

FFG has to mea culpa hard core and fix this

Edit: after looking at my previous posts I defended ppl who knew losing for both would be bad thus much like this situation however I never imaged 8 players doing so to lock everyone else out of a chance at the cut.

I imagined that the minute the stupid rule went online. Hence the initial complaints against the document. I also get the feeling that somehow, FFG is going to word things in such a way in the article that it is going to make things worse. Kinda like this statement.

The document leaves the decision to allow the draw or not up to the T.O. at the tournament. A situation like Roanoke is obviously collusion (to prove a point and because the rules allowed them, but it was still within the T.O.s right to decline 3-8 from drawing), yet now in this brief statement, they claim it was by the book. Now granted, this statement might not be official, and even if it is, it could be some intern that wrote it.

So which is it FFG? Is two players deciding to ID to box out anyone from passing them colluding to gain an advantage (because, duh, of course it is) and the T.O. can require them to play, as opposed to the top two seeds doing an ID because they are both in the cut regardless (fine with this for the most part. It seems to be the reason the rule exists). Or do the players get to just tell the T.O. they are drawing and the T.O. has to like it (which is what this sounds like in this statement). What other collusion is the T.O. possibly present during the players' conversation to stop if gaming the tournament standings isn't collusion. You're going in circles FFG.

THIS ISN'T ABOUT THE RULE BEING A THING OR NOT FFG, IT'S HOW IT IS HANDLED. GET SPECIFIC.

Though it is probably just cleaner, simpler, easier to get rid of the **** thing.

If you go into a 6 round tourney with a bye in hand, you can win 3 games for 15 points, bye counts as 5 and draw one for 21 points total, the other game can win or lose but might be a bit iffy depending on other standings, something needs to be looked at if someone can play 4 games all day and get in the top 8 winning 3 of them

6/8 were on 21 points with 2 of the 8 having byes at roanoke

Radio TCX posted a podcast today where they interview FFGOP's Wade Piche.

At around the 25 minute mark they start talking about the Hoth Open. There is no mention of the ID.

He did say the goal at Hoth was for 6-0 with all modified wins to make day two. And that 6 rounds is optimal in a single day.

After that they just talked about prizes. That everyone likes the cards the most of all prizes, that he reads the forums and looks to see what people say about OP and what OP items they want, and that "great surprises" are incoming.

I don't know when it was recorded, but at that time FFGOP was seemingly clueless to the ID issue. I hope they've all been reading the forums since.

@FFGOP: remove the victory points from Intentional Draws.

Or, alternatively, especially based on the recent FFG communication, the draw wasn't a big deal because it was used as it was intended. In fact, the Hoth draw doesn't seem to have gotten much wide discussion until this week (there was discussion on reddit) and certainly didn't hold the same level of controversy.

I think it's pretty much impossible that Wade didn't know about the ID at Hoth considering 1) he was there, and 2) one of the players involved in the Hoth draw was until recently from the TC, so the TCX hosts and Wade probably know him on a more personal level.

If you go into a 6 round tourney with a bye in hand, you can win 3 games for 15 points, bye counts as 5 and draw one for 21 points total, the other game can win or lose but might be a bit iffy depending on other standings, something needs to be looked at if someone can play 4 games all day and get in the top 8 winning 3 of them

6/8 were on 21 points with 2 of the 8 having byes at roanoke

That does require winning 3 games in a row against other players that are undefeated or carrying a bye as well.

It is possible to accept these two statements as simultaneously true:

1. intentional draws are dumb
2. intentional draws do not ruin the game for all time and always

I dislike the rule, dislike its point value, dislike FFGOP's tone deaf response tonight ("we need it so things are fair for all!!" -- um, what??)... but I have a hard time seeing it becoming a regular thing where people still on the bubble get locked out. Am I missing something in the math?

You are missing something in the math, and you will in fact see it happening all the time.

It's pretty straightforward to figure out that, any time the entirety of players with a given number of tournament points is contained in the Top 8 in the next-to-last Swiss round, they will all have the opportunity to take a draw that would secure their Top 8 spot.

Without intentional draws, half of them could be displaced from the Top 8 (due to them losing the round, the next tier of tournament points winning the round, and MoV becoming the deciding factor).

So that's 3 players who'd have had a chance at the Top 8 being denied said chance.

Not only that, but there's tools to figure out what the tournament points of the Top 8 will look like, given the number of players in attendance. So for anyone who's earned more points than the lowest that will make the Top 8, they can safely draw (or even forfeit) their remaining matches without missing the cut. In practice, this will start to look like the undefeated players offering a draw from 2 rounds out instead of just the last round.

It will be a rare sight to see a tournament that doesn't have an intentional draw take place.

And the awful thing is, it stands a reasonable chance that FFG OP is going to look at that and say, "see? This is a rule you guys needed, look how often people use it!"

Double draw in would take an obscene number of people, not to mention the game isn't conducive to tournaments that size (time of round, size of gameplay area). I wouldn't ever worry about it. 1 point versus 5 is pretty huge, even a modified win at 3 points is enough to surpass a double draw.

You are correct, it will be rare to see a tournament without an ID take place. Almost always the undefeateds going into the last round (of which there should only be 2) will draw. But then again, it largely won't matter to anyone else.

Occasionally at certain player counts near the top end of each Swiss round breakdown (so 50+ but less than 64) you might see situations where the top 4 can ID in. This might cause a couple people to have what would have been a "meaningful" game for Top 8 reasons (under very defined circumstances involving MOV) to suddenly be playing for 9th place instead of 8th.

Which is the hilarious part. All the people who hate ID seem to think unless you Top 8 it doesn't matter, and they are saying that people who ID are only concerned with being in the Top 8 and that's a bad thing.