[Eddie]

Masters Cup update

Just letting everyone know about a few changes we have planned, and would like to hear some community feedback before we proceed.



New player ranking system
SEA 'Power ranks'

As most would be aware, the way we seed players for each tournament is determined by SEA GM ladder ranking, as voted by the community last year. However this system is becoming outdated, as many of the top tier SEA players aren't as active on SEA, compared to servers such as KR/NA, and thus we sometimes end up with seeds that don't quite reflect the highest skill level and reward/acknowledge past tournament performances. Furthermore, with global play in the works, playing on one server (even one's native server) will become more redundant. So it's time to take a new approach.

SEA Power Ranks is a working title for the process we shall use to determine seeding. We shall be allocting points for placing in each Masters Cup. These are then added to a players career total points to work out our monthly seeds. Masters Cup is one of, if not the toughest event in our region, so points will be given from 1st to 16th place to reward those who finish highly, but might just fall short of the 1st-3rd cash prizes. It also serves to reward regular participation.

Points break down

1st - 100 points
2nd- 60
3rd - 40
4th - 20
5th-8th - 10
9th-16th - 5

(300 points total for a standard Masters Cup)

*Double points shall be given for International editions.

Points for placing will start from the Masters Cup on Sunday Dec 16. (Since this is an international edition, as a once off, seeding will be formed via admin discretion, as SEA rankings is not applicable, and we require a transition event to change across to the points system.

Seeding would run for 12 months, then reset. We will run a special edition for the top yearly ranked players at the years conclusion.

Map Pool

We are updating the tournaments map pool. Changes:

Out: GSL Bel'shir Beach, Tal'Darim Altar LE, WCS Shakuras Plateau
In: GSL Whirlwind

+ [Map Pool] +

Maps: WCS Cloud Kingdom, WCS Daybreak, WCS Entombed Valley, GSL Metropolis, WCS Ohana, WCS Anitga Shipyard, GSL Whirlwind

Since we're removing two maps, for the best of 5 finals, both players may select 1 veto from the map pool, not two like past events.

Feedback, or other ideas are welcome.

Masters Cup News, Results + Hall of Fame
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[TtSYF.tRoy]

Great work, thats a really good idea well done

[AvPoker]

In my opinion, seeding has hardly any significance as you only skip one round and you normally vs a lower level player which is pretty much a walkover. In fact, by introducing this new system, then there will be less incentive to ladder in SEA as a result.

[Baldie]

Originally Posted by xGKingPoker

In my opinion, seeding has hardly any significance as you only skip one round and you normally vs a lower level player which is pretty much a walkover. In fact, by introducing this new system, then there will be less incentive to ladder in SEA as a result.

We were experiencing a similar thing with wT Weekly and thus made a decision to collate all data from the 41 weeks of play to create a table for seeding.

What I would love to see happen moving forward is for major repetitive tournaments hosting seeding through tournament place rankings (like we have decided for wT Weekly and now Masters Cup as well) and then should the organisers and community be willing, there could be a SEA Leader board which incorporates points from all major events (ACL, Masters Cup, wT Weekly, Beast of the week and any other event which has GM and Master play).

ACL events could for example be worth 3x on the SEA official ladder vs the 2x of a Masters cup vs the 1x of a wT Weekly or something like that (eg wT Weekly win is 20 points, Masters Cup is 100 points, ACL is 250) This would promote tournament participation within SEA I feel.

Food for thought but as SEA ladder rankings is so unreliable I think having tournament seeding is great, plus it has people have a sense of achievement and adds another story to any tournament. I guess the big drawback is it makes laddering in SEA even less important but I dunno if it's even something you guys would consider viable training anyway?

I'd be more than happy to be accountable for it should organisers provide ranking data to me.

Either way I think with 2013 just around the corner there is an opportunity to look into something like this.

[TidaL]

Interesting, hope the seeding works out well!

[zendex]

Is GSL Whirlwind uploaded in the SEA server already? Tried searching just yesterday and only found Abyssal City.

Quick Comments

asdfSchnitzel:

it's in the arcade i think

[Dox]

Although Pokerface makes some very good points, I'm glad to see someone taking the initiative to design a comprehensive ranking system. ACL points were always a fantastic measure, but having something online that is free and accessible to everyone is even better. Nice work!

[SLCN.Wally]

Yeah, very cool indeed. Hope it all goes well!

[nirvAnA]

I think this is a fairer short term measure for now which is good.

In the long term - I feel it would be good to work towards a comprehensive SEA ranking system that integrates all the tournaments in SEA. With points awarded based on the prize pool / significance of the event. WCS, IEM, ACLs, as well as the smaller ones like wT, CityHunter, GPDs etc.

So it could start off first being a very simple database that captures the points and placings of users. Over time, it could evolve into something like TLPD with detailed matches and rankings for players, clans and pro-teams. Making clan wars even more fun. I.e players individual ELOs can affects clan ratings too. So for clans there are two ratings - Clan ELO (clan wars) and Clan Avg player ELO.

So for a start the simple database can just be used to capture what Eddie suggests, but also rewards placings in

• WCS
• IEM Qualifiers
• MLG Qualifiers
• NASL Qualifiers
• ACL Qualifiers
• Masters Cups
• wT Weeklies
• Any other regular / decent tournament

And it will be up to those tournaments to take those rankings into account when deciding seedings. Well its the first step towards more integration and encouraging participation in grass root tournaments and clan wars. The ultimate goal is to develop a universal SEA system that creates accurate seedings for tournaments, based on tournament results as well as provide a competitive universal ranking SEA ladder which everyone can observe.

dingobloo and xpaperclip help!

Quick Comments

Baldie:

While the coding is being managed we could work out rough point values for each tournament!

[Thrasher]

HAH That sounds awesome you should start right away :P

[xpaperclip]

I don't know if I like a placings-based point system for seeding across tournaments, especially if only the points accumulated was maintained. It would need very careful consideration of the aims, and depending on that, how weighting and point decay should work to ensure it doesn't disadvantage those who are unable to make particular tournaments, etc., as well as protecting against a 'rich get richer' type scenario doesn't occur (e.g. being used for seeding into staged qualifiers like IEM).

On the other hand, I've been thinking about and advocating for a records database for ages. I think there have been a couple attempts made in the past which never really took off.

As such, even though just recording placings may be sufficient for making a ranking, I think we should use this as an opportunity to start recording detailed map records in 2013 as well. This would also establish a basis for running an Elo-like rating system in the future.

Sadly, for historical tournaments, that data has probably been lost forever (apart from possibly a few exceptions). Also, as far as I can tell, neither of the commonly used bracket systems (here and Challonge) support entering this data.

Nevertheless, I think it would be really fantastic for leagues to start collecting this information, even though we don't yet have a store to hold it. That is- ensuring consistency in brackets (replacements, walkovers, etc. being properly noted), recording things like map order played in Bo-series, or even just gathering replay packs of all games played so the information can be mined later on.

Quick Comments

TACeeSerps:

I spent half a day collecting info for wT matches with cut off RO16.. too much work

[TACeeSerps]

TACeeSerps:
I spent half a day collecting info for wT matches with cut off RO16.. too much work

To elaborate further, I've always wanted to do exactly what PC is talking about. I gathered a lot of information including wT weekly brackets on Challonge, and MC brackets also, bookmarked a whole bunch and started collecting the data in a spreadsheet. After further breaking it down to only those that made RO16, I came to the realisation that it was going to be a mammoth task that I didn't really have time for. The one question that always bugged me was, "How do I sort this info?".

I never answered that question sadly. I dedicated almost a whole day copying/manually entering the data to a spreadsheet, sorting it into matches, matchups, race, maps, results, map score. This lead to my last question before tapping out, "At what point in the bracket, and at what point in the past should data be cut off? Do I stop at 3 months ago, and RO16, or do I go back 6 months and only look at RO8?"

This is probably my biggest hurdle in life. Taking on too much, failing, and giving up. It is the main reason I haven't really been around SC2SEA lately. But this is a post about finding ELO, and not my blog.

Good luck to all those that get it up and running! I am looking forward to seeing the end result in the near future.

[Stallion]

taking ELO off events with bo1 is silly too imo people get cheesed out like no tomorrow just have the ELO events being the bo3 or greater events like iem and masters cup imo

[|Erasmus|]

I dislike ELO in general. I prefer some of other rating systems like the FIFA one. They don't require tweaking to deal with issues where people can maintain a high ELO through inactivity or differently weighted events.

As many other people said though, the really big issue is just data collection. It's far too tedious to do manually. Maybe if you incorporated replay parsing to just automatically mine data, but even then, round ordering is important as your future changes in rating are affected by the change in rating in each previous round. (Actually, the FIFA system would allow this too, as you get points based off the opposition's current ranking, which is updated monthly with any points gained in that period).

This is clearly derailing eddie's thread though, and not really useful for his purposes (atm). I think it'd be good if a mod would split this discussion about a completely separate unified ranking system into its own thread.

[Eddie]

I'd also like to add that seeding would run for 12 months, then reset. We will run a special edition for the top yearly ranked players at the years conclusion.

Adding the ranking system will make future cups more exciting as we see competition for the top seeds come into play. Players jumping up and down the rankings, bragging rights, goals for top 30/20/10, targets to aim for, etc. It will take a few Cups to see this come into action. All player records will be available to the public.

Thanks for the feedback so far.

Originally Posted by xGKingPoker

In my opinion, seeding has hardly any significance as you only skip one round and you normally vs a lower level player which is pretty much a walkover. In fact, by introducing this new system, then there will be less incentive to ladder in SEA as a result.

True, there may be less reason to ladder on SEA, but currently there's not many high level players who do regularly anyway.

Cup-Cup the benefit of seeding my change depending on who players, how players x/y match up against each other, but the more Cups we run, the benefits of being in the top 16 should increase. In a 100+ player tournament you wont meet higher seeds until the mid-late stage.

Originally Posted by nirvAnA

In the long term - I feel it would be good to work towards a comprehensive SEA ranking system that integrates all the tournaments in SEA. With points awarded based on the prize pool / significance of the event. WCS, IEM, ACLs, as well as the smaller ones like wT, CityHunter, GPDs etc.

So it could start off first being a very simple database that captures the points and placings of users. Over time, it could evolve into something like TLPD with detailed matches and rankings for players, clans and pro-teams. Making clan wars even more fun. I.e players individual ELOs can affects clan ratings too. So for clans there are two ratings - Clan ELO (clan wars) and Clan Avg player ELO.

So for a start the simple database can just be used to capture what Eddie suggests, but also rewards placings in

• WCS
• IEM Qualifiers
• MLG Qualifiers
• NASL Qualifiers
• ACL Qualifiers
• Masters Cups
• wT Weeklies
• Any other regular / decent tournament

And it will be up to those tournaments to take those rankings into account when deciding seedings. Well its the first step towards more integration and encouraging participation in grass root tournaments and clan wars. The ultimate goal is to develop a universal SEA system that creates accurate seedings for tournaments, based on tournament results as well as provide a competitive universal ranking SEA ladder which everyone can observe.

dingobloo and xpaperclip help!

Would be cool, but you can't include online + lan events in the same SEA wide ranking.

LAN events are open open to a small % of SEA players due to how spread out we are geographically. You'd also see some places with far more active lan scenes, eg Sydney, compared to Singapore for example.

ACL's + City Hunter already have their own good record + seeding systems in place for those Australians able to attend.

MLG Qualifiers + NASL Qualifiers, etc are only open to a few of our highest tier who have the chance to travel and perform internationally with the backing of their team. Plus these events aren't run and organised by and for SEA. The travel assistance/tournament entry is the reward. Same deal with IEM + WCS.

I don't think a TLPD would work in SEA for everything. Would need to be select tournaments, or events grouped together, eg by country/state. Several TLPD's.

The only current tournament that i can see us forming a combined/shared ranking with is the WT Weekly. Concerns there are it would need to be scaled as lower prize pool, bo1's, and open to all levels( ? Although not a big deal). I'm sure something could be easily worked out if both parties wanted.

[Eddie]

SEA Power ranks are now in effect. Public can view player database here.

Will get better the more MC's we run, and when we bring in other online tournaments that have expressed interest