[rezyn8]

Cool - will drop in and say hi!

[Maynarde]

Looking forward to that rules document and some more details on that new style of bracket

[Dox]

Document is complete, I'll post a link to it when I get home from work. (Approx 1.5 hrs)

[Dox]

Okay, here's the ruleset and map list!

• ACL Pro StarCraft II Ruleset & Maplist (Requires Adobe Reader to view)

A few comments:
1. I can only guarantee that this is relevant at the Brisbane, Melbourne and Online qualifiers. As the Sydney and Adelaide events are operating external to ACL (we're just piggybacking the Arena/CityHunter tournaments), I can't speak for them.

2. The style of this bracket is new to SC2, and perhaps even RTS in general. The purpose is to ensure that ALL players get to play an equal number of games, rather than being eliminated in 30 minutes and going home disappointed.

3. The style of this bracket also ensures that the best players are matched against the best players, whilst the lower tiers can play amongst themselves. It also provides an avenue for "up and coming" players to be rewarded with bonus points.

4. Even if you regard yourself as the worst player in the world, this tournament style encourages a more interactive, social experience, where the entire tournament progresses as a single unit, rather than segmenting the players into groups. At the very least, everyone gets to play a minimum of 12 games, and provides a good opportunity for players to get to know eachother throughout a more structure schedule.

5. Single/Double Elimination brackets can be very unforgiving on one hand, and very lackluster on the other. Sometimes you'll see two "potential finalists" eliminating eachother in the early rounds, whereas sometimes you'll see the winner of a tournament make it to the grand finals after having only played 3 rounds. This way, we get to see ALL of the best players face off against oneanother.

If anyone has any further questions about the bracket style, schedule, maps, or anything, feel free to post here or e-mail me at d.reball@aclpro.com.au.

Otherwise I'll see you guys at 10:00AM on Saturday morning!

Quick Comments

Eddie:

[TAminimat]

BSG tried out the swiss bracket style one time and the majority of the players really disliked it. IIRC if you loose your first match you cannot win, and I think many lower higher level players would rather go through a losers bracket. Just my opinion though.

[Eddie]

Will be an interesting experiment!

Can definitely see it being more rewarding to the lower-mid level players. Not sure how it will go for the top few.

All bo3's is awesome too! That's a lot of games for those questioning the $25

I guess a negative is won't have much time to get around and watch others play.

[|Erasmus|]

Originally Posted by TAminimat

BSG tried out the swiss bracket style one time and the majority of the players really disliked it. IIRC if you loose your first match you cannot win, and I think many lower higher level players would rather go through a losers bracket. Just my opinion though.

This, basically. It's really good if you want to then say a single elimination T8 playoff, because it just gets a little bit harder if you lose first round (x-1 should still get you there eventually, but you'll have bad tiebreakers cause the guy you beat second round is 0-2 then, so you'll get less points for beating terrible players).

I think it's really bad depending on how ACL points are awarded/how the initial round is seeded. Swiss systems are usually just randomly generated from evenly matched opponents, so you may have two pros play first round, and the winner is the only one with a chance to win from this point.

[Dox]

Originally Posted by |Erasmus|

You may have two pros play first round, and the winner is the only one with a chance to win from this point.

As I said, I'll be seeding players to make sure that doesn't happen. They'll match eachother in the 2nd round anyway.

@Breadfan: I'm sure they'd be happy to play you during/after the tournament in some custom games. It happens at all the LAN's I go to!

Thanks for the feedback so far guys - hopefully I can show you why I think this is most suitable!

[rezyn8]

Ha I might have to play as well as admin!

Just had a read over the rules - it looks great! Certainly helps the mid level players, and keeps interest in the tournament throughout. Nice work.

[Eddie]

Pretty big map pool. 5 non ladder maps too. Saw no mention of veto's? There is none i take it?

[Dox]

Originally Posted by Eddie

Pretty big map pool. 5 non ladder maps too. Saw no mention of veto's? There is none i take it?

Nope, as it says in the document, the first map of each round is predetermined, loser picks the next map. Originally I had a fairly small map pool, but I decided to expand it to increase variety 'cos I'm getting bored of seeing Shakuras/Tal'Darim/Shattered (and SOMETIMES Antiga) in every single Bo3.

It also helps to speed things up because some players take like 10+ minutes to go through the veto/veto/pick process when the results are ultimately the same.

[breadfan]

Sounds very interesting... I think how successful it turns out will come down a lot to how the points/rankings are allocated. Any chance of seeing some more info? Sounds like it'll be complicated to figure out on the fly, at the event

As a suggestion in the future (like I said, without knowing all the details of this one in particular) I wouldn't mind seeing a mixed format for future events...

Maybe BO3 double elim for qualification points and players knocked out in the first 3 or 4 rounds go into a swiss-style consolation bracket?

Also...

3. The style of this bracket also ensures that the best players are matched against the best players, whilst the lower tiers can play amongst themselves. It also provides an avenue for "up and coming" players to be rewarded with bonus points.

Was hoping to actually get to play some of these players who are quite a lot better than me skill-wise. For them, it might be an easy step up the qualifying ladder in the early rounds, and for me I get some replays against great opponents (who I otherwise don't get the chance to play while laddering) to pick through at my leisure

But I'm looking forward to it, might get some new practice partners out of it!

[ToR.Arnor]

Hey

gotta say I really love the idea of the swiss system, it was something Myself and Dave considered for the very 1st SCII LAN we held back in August 2010 but ultimately we got turned down because our boss found it too difficult to comprehend lol

I will consider implementing this format for our next event once ive seen how it works great job mixing it up!

[breadfan]

Originally Posted by |Erasmus|

This, basically. It's really good if you want to then say a single elimination T8 playoff, because it just gets a little bit harder if you lose first round (x-1 should still get you there eventually, but you'll have bad tiebreakers cause the guy you beat second round is 0-2 then, so you'll get less points for beating terrible players).

I think it's really bad depending on how ACL points are awarded/how the initial round is seeded. Swiss systems are usually just randomly generated from evenly matched opponents, so you may have two pros play first round, and the winner is the only one with a chance to win from this point.

That's a good point, but I think as long as the points are right, it really does a pretty similar job to a losers bracket in double elim - if you lose your first game and win your next 4, you end up doing pretty well. If you don't win the next 4, you'd be knocked out in the double elim anyway.

It just comes down to the disparity in how many points beating which opponents is worth vs how random the matchups are

Edit: the more I look at this, the more I like it! I ran a sim at work and it goes pretty well - very similar to a double elim except that it does give people those extra games.