[nirvAnA]

Its hard for me to leave a feedback list because I absolutely love what you're doing and don't want you to feel its not appreciated! Nevertheless I know you would take on any suggestions you feel will make the events better so thats the only reason why i am writing this and here are some of my thoughts.

Seedings - Top 4 seedings were fantastic of course but I feel this could have been extended to top 16 or 32, especially in a large tournament. The exact order of seedings isn't as important as it is to define them as a top 32 group as this is to avoid first round matchups like revenant vs mafia or redarcon vs tgun. Another benefit of this is the top players get walkovers if the bracket isn't full which helps reduce their playing time as they are likely to be in the tournament longer.

OP Information - OP rules on news page weren't very clear (apart from the participation rule), people kept asking in the channel how to report results, if they needed to send in replays, what map it was on. some didnt know it was Bo3 etc. Of course its obvious to some people, "its dox cup of course we should report to dox" and all the information was in the thread and brackets page (thats how i knew too and could copy/past people who were asking the link) but we are organisers and sadly have to "spoon feed" people most of the time by including the most vital informational in an clear accessible place in the OP.

Admin Help- 1-2 admins to help so that brackets could be processed faster. challonge allows admin access for the brackets so its easy for multiple people to manage it. perhaps could have assigned a trusted admin to handle just the walkovers and double checking of the missing players as well as handling all the random faq spam in the channel allowing you to focus and handle the main bracket yourself.

Prize Structure - imo abit too unforgiving and too "top prize heavy." for e.g mafia played something like 10 hours and ended up top 8 with nothing.

instead of
350, 150, 50

maybe have
250, 150, 50, 20, 10, 10, 5, 5

so players get at least something for going that far and more pple will be encouraged to join thinking they might have a higher chance to win at least something. also felt $500 was huge! could have had two smaller dox cups $250, would have had same turn out. basically in SEA anything over $250 gets 95% of the community tournament players to join.

Integration with our events - If you are open to this idea i think it will be fantastic. Kinda like the masters cup and GPDs where the top GPD players each week earn seedings into the masters cup with a $120 prize pool at the end of the month. For the dox cup maybe you can have the top 4 of the CO weekly qualify each week, and this is kinda the "open qualification" which anyone can join, meaning that gives you 4 Open Qualifications tournaments. At the end of the month you have an exclusive 32-man dox cup with 16 invited players and 16 top 4 CO players and have a very nice and manageable double elim 32 bracket which everyone had a chance to qualify for, and win prizes along the way. (the co prize) Also makes the viewer wanna sit down and watch it till the end as its much shorter and of a higher level of play, less down time, little or no walkovers etc.

Emailing replays - too much work for players imo, and gamers are generally lazy and dont want to send it or take too long and need prompting, which makes the reporting of results delayed. Also no1 ever watches the replays of unknown player a vs B in the ro256. normally we just included the winners replay pack or from ro16 onwards cause thats when it gets tense and what people want to watch. i guess this helps in your smurf detection process, an alternative method could be to check ips on sc2sea for suspected smurfers.

check in system - this is a problem sc2sea still has today, so i don't have any suggested solutions for it. Our sc2seas coder came up with some custom tourney check in script for the SEASL which was fantastic and helped reduce alot of walkovers but that has not been used since as it needs some coding for each event. probably gonna get some custom coding done on the site in the near future to integrate it with our tournament script as walkovers are really annoying and spoil tournaments!

Final Words!
Anyway i hope you have found some of this feedback helpful. I love your spirit and what you're doing as well as your casting towards the end. I wish i could do something to help, hearing the strain / exhaustion in your voice as you had so little sleep and were busy right from the early morning but yet still went on to cast and did a great job!! hero . Hope the smurfing incident and "backlash" does not dampen your spirits, do note that these are the vast minority of people. Its actually something i encounter on daily basis at sc2sea too with 4-5 "trouble makers" with zero appreciation who think they deserve special treatment and that I created the site for their sole enjoyment. They are just the most vocal thats why it may seem like sometimes thats the "shared opinion" but never let that dishearten you. Looking forward to many more dox cups!

For me when i put things in perspective its always just these same group of 4-5 troublemakers who are the only ones causing the problems every time. The vast majority of the community greatly appreciates what you're doing and continuing to take your time and money to host events etc knowing you have created this experience for them always makes it worthwhile.

[Dox]

Woo! Some more valuable feedback. I'll reply below.

Originally Posted by nirvAnA

Seedings - Top 4 seedings were fantastic of course but I feel this could have been extended to top 16 or 32, especially in a large tournament. The exact order of seedings isn't as important as it is to define them as a top 32 group as this is to avoid first round matchups like revenant vs mafia or redarcon vs tgun. Another benefit of this is the top players get walkovers if the bracket isn't full which helps reduce their playing time as they are likely to be in the tournament longer.

To be honest, this was a gauging event for me. I had no idea how much interest I would spark from the community. If you recall on one of the first few pages of my registration thread, I actually made a comment like, "I hope we fill the bracket." The response was overwhelming! We nearly doubled it. So yeah, the format will be much more accommodating next time. I've awarded points to the top 32 players and will publish a list sometime in the next few weeks. (Really busy)

OP Information - OP rules on news page weren't very clear (apart from the participation rule), people kept asking in the channel how to report results, if they needed to send in replays, what map it was on. some didnt know it was Bo3 etc. Of course its obvious to some people, "its dox cup of course we should report to dox" and all the information was in the thread and brackets page (thats how i knew too and could copy/past people who were asking the link) but we are organisers and sadly have to "spoon feed" people most of the time by including the most vital informational in an clear accessible place in the OP.

Over the last 11 years I've found that no matter how accessible the information is, people will always sit in a channel ask for information rather than alt-tab and look at it. All of the information was included on the brackets page, as I knew that was the one place all players were guaranteed to look. Unfortunately I was planning on using my own bracket system for the event but I ran out of time and had to fall back on Challonge. The next event will be much smoother (and include check-in's and win reporting!) I didn't really have any interaction in the channel, but I did have like 200 PM windows open. :P

Admin Help- 1-2 admins to help so that brackets could be processed faster. challonge allows admin access for the brackets so its easy for multiple people to manage it. perhaps could have assigned a trusted admin to handle just the walkovers and double checking of the missing players as well as handling all the random faq spam in the channel allowing you to focus and handle the main bracket yourself.

I managed fine with updating the brackets until the MajOr drama happened. That really detracted from the flow of the event unfortunately. Next time we'll have a win reporting system and users won't need to report their results to an admin.

Prize Structure - imo abit too unforgiving and too "top prize heavy." for e.g mafia played something like 10 hours and ended up top 8 with nothing.

instead of
350, 150, 50

maybe have
250, 150, 50, 20, 10, 10, 5, 5

so players get at least something for going that far and more pple will be encouraged to join thinking they might have a higher chance to win at least something. also felt $500 was huge! could have had two smaller dox cups $250, would have had same turn out. basically in SEA anything over $250 gets 95% of the community tournament players to join.

We'll see... I plan on making each event bigger than the last. I don't see any real value in a prize under $100 to be honest. Initially I wasn't even going to give a prize to 3rd place, but I felt it was quite harsh to someone who would have spent hours battling their way out of the lower bracket and have nothing to show for it. I'm thinking something like $500, $200, $100 for the next event. I'll give it some more thought between now and then.

Integration with our events - If you are open to this idea i think it will be fantastic. Kinda like the masters cup and GPDs where the top GPD players each week earn seedings into the masters cup with a $120 prize pool at the end of the month. For the dox cup maybe you can have the top 4 of the CO weekly qualify each week, and this is kinda the "open qualification" which anyone can join, meaning that gives you 4 Open Qualifications tournaments. At the end of the month you have an exclusive 32-man dox cup with 16 invited players and 16 top 4 CO players and have a very nice and manageable double elim 32 bracket which everyone had a chance to qualify for, and win prizes along the way. (the co prize) Also makes the viewer wanna sit down and watch it till the end as its much shorter and of a higher level of play, less down time, little or no walkovers etc.

I thought about this and to be honest, I'm still on the fence about it. There are obvious benefits to this (especially from my point of view), but on the other hand I do like the "clean slate" opportunities. I'll consider it for future events.

Emailing replays - too much work for players imo, and gamers are generally lazy and dont want to send it or take too long and need prompting, which makes the reporting of results delayed. Also no1 ever watches the replays of unknown player a vs B in the ro256. normally we just included the winners replay pack or from ro16 onwards cause thats when it gets tense and what people want to watch. i guess this helps in your smurf detection process, an alternative method could be to check ips on sc2sea for suspected smurfers.

I think all of the players were extremely co-operative. All of the replays you see in this folder (Dox Cup #1 Replays) were e-mailed to me by the players. It's more of a favor to the players than it is to the viewers. There were plenty of opportunities to e-mail the games between rounds due to downtime. Again, this is a feature I'd like to integrate better in the future... but more information on this later.

check in system - this is a problem sc2sea still has today, so i don't have any suggested solutions for it. Our sc2seas coder came up with some custom tourney check in script for the SEASL which was fantastic and helped reduce alot of walkovers but that has not been used since as it needs some coding for each event. probably gonna get some custom coding done on the site in the near future to integrate it with our tournament script as walkovers are really annoying and spoil tournaments!

Not a problem. Fortunately I didn't need to invest any thought into this at all. The TL thread sparked the interest of some individuals who I'm working closely with to resolve this! community.

Final Words!
Anyway i hope you have found some of this feedback helpful. I love your spirit and what you're doing as well as your casting towards the end. I wish i could do something to help, hearing the strain / exhaustion in your voice as you had so little sleep and were busy right from the early morning but yet still went on to cast and did a great job!! hero . Hope the smurfing incident and "backlash" does not dampen your spirits, do note that these are the vast minority of people. Its actually something i encounter on daily basis at sc2sea too with 4-5 "trouble makers" with zero appreciation who think they deserve special treatment and that I created the site for their sole enjoyment. They are just the most vocal thats why it may seem like sometimes thats the "shared opinion" but never let that dishearten you. Looking forward to many more dox cups!

For me when i put things in perspective its always just these same group of 4-5 troublemakers who are the only ones causing the problems every time. The vast majority of the community greatly appreciates what you're doing and continuing to take your time and money to host events etc knowing you have created this experience for them always makes it worthwhile.

I absolutely do find it helpful. I know my "answer to everything" attitude probably makes it look like I'm comfortable with everything as-is and am not willing to change, but this was simply an event to gauge and generate interest. Expect bigger and brighter things in the future, and I'll be relying on community feedback as the driver.

It was an exhausting event after having only slept 4 hours (my original bracket plan fell through so I was up until 5:00AM desperately setting up a contingency), but none of it really got to me. I'll continue pushing the SEA scene forward with more events in the future.