Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Points for bubbling at Premier Tournaments

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losjackal

losjackal

Technical Administrator
This suggestion has come up before, but I'd like to discuss a specific logical proposal.

The recent tournaments are reminding me how brutal the Cities were last year, with restrictions to Top 8 for Masters and resistance due to luck of early pairings so often dictating in the Junior and Senior divisions who makes Top Cut and gets points, and who doesn't. Juniors and Seniors with the same record as 4th place, or 8th place in Masters, are left out in the cold. (That's assuming Masters don't go above 63 players...out of 127 tournaments reported so far, only 4 had more than 64 players for the 9th place kickers to take effect).

It makes sense to me that people who bubble out of cut with the same record as people who made cut should be rewarded with Championship Points. They can't play on to get more points, or for the prizes, but at least they don't walk away empty-handed. But since this proposal means more distribution of points all around, that means the threshold for a Worlds invitation would need to go up as well. (50-100 points? hard to know at this point)


So, would the competitive players prefer to be rewarded this way for their semi-successful match record, even if it means garnering more points along the way?


P.S. From a computation standpoint, this may not be an easy change for the TPC servers to handle, so be advised this may not even be technically possible for some reason. So we're just debating if it's logical and beneficial for players.
 
past experience suggests that POP are resource constrained.

however..

I don't get why the 9-12 place kicker starts at the same player count as the 13-16 kicker. The number of players who tie on wins-losses with players who do get CPs could be reduced by some small adjustments to the kicker breakpoints. You won't fix it for everyone but having the kicker breakpoints at 24 for 5-8th and 48 for 9-12th would soften the transition.

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I wonder if anyone will disagree with your post?
 
Good point. Maybe that was a server thing too...meaning, TOM and the programs that analyze results from tournaments inherently look for logic based on the 16-32-64-128 player count divisions. Maybe it couldn't handle 48 yet.

Also, it softens the transition for Masters, but wouldn't help Juniors and Seniors in the same way. Along those lines, it's interesting that all age divisions have the same point threshold. Feels like that could be more precise, so I'd bet POP needed another year of data to figure that out better.
 
In a perfect world everyone would get points, but there needs to be a cut off at some point. Yes bubbling suck but that is the nature of the beast.
 
Totally agree, and it wouldn't even be too difficult to implement.

losjackal said:
or 8th place in Masters, are left out in the cold. (That's assuming Masters don't go above 63 players...
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Is there any bubbling in that range? Afaik even with 63 players all 5-1 make the cut while 4-2 are usually out. It's one of the cleanest cuts.

The most critical range is 23 to 31 players with a possibility to bubble out with 4-1 which is an 80 % win rate and obviously only one single loss (maybe donk?).
 
I feel that points should be distributed by final standing, not by finishing place.

At one of our regionals I finished 4:2 and came in 16th while a friend finished 7th and won the whole thing. Im not bitter about it or anythng but I still feel that a 4-2 is a 4-2 and should give equal points to both players and then, whoever made the cut, has the chance to earn more points.

So points should be distributed to anyone who got the same swiss results as the last person who made topcut. Would be much fairer and not put so much emphasis on tiebreakers. I guess you could argue that someone who went x-0 and loses in the first round of topcut shoulkd get more points then someone who went x-2 and loses in the first round of topcut but those are details which are kinda open to discussion.


Im honestly somewhat w orried about my invite and I live in the area with the most tournaments in europe..
You can always have a bad day or barely miss cut, pokemon is a game with a huge luck factor and regionals are basically all that matters :(
 
POP will never agree that all 4-2s should be treated alike. Most TOs won't agree with that either. a player who starts 4-0 does face different levels of competition that one who starts 0-2

Most pokemon in Europe ? that all depends upon how most is measured.
 
True enough. So what's the difference between both 4-2 records? The 4-0 player faced tougher opponents, and likely has a better resistance, meaning that they will advance into the Top Cut while the 0-2 opponent does not. But then to get to 4-2, the 0-2 player met some tough opponents along the way and still prevailed, so my argument is they should get some reward for meeting the 4-0 player at the end with the same record.

Furthermore, what governed the 0-2 player's first two losses? First round is totally random pairings, meaning it could be a bad type matchup, or facing a rogue deck, etc. The second round is even a "weed out" round, because those fortunate decks from Round 1 are now facing the real opponents in Round 2. My conjecture that only when you get to Round 3 do you finally get the good players facing the good players, and the rest of us (myself included) usually at the lower half of the tables.

Your post above is affirming the norm: that players who go 0-2 and then win out are disregarded not only by TOM, but I guess by the TO's too. My proposal is attempting to reward a good record but unfortunate pairings.
 
NoPoke said:
a player who starts 4-0 does face different levels of competition that one who starts 0-2
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OpponentsWin doesn't say much about the competition level. I've played tournaments where I was 4-0 before the final round and didn't make the top four cut.

Also, you could face a good opponent who has a bad day and drops with 1-3, giving you the worst possible tiebreaker for defeating a good player. The option to drop completely messes up OpponentsWin as a tie breaker, and that's why Magic tournaments have additional swiss rounds so that this score is less important.

Yes, you can't make a fair tiebreaker, but that's why those who got unlucky with it should be at least compensated if possible. I understand that prize support is fixed and has to be given out by placement, but it's no problem to give out CP.
 
FWIW I am not affirming the norm. Agreeing that the bubble needs to be addressed is not the same as agreeing that all 4-2 records are the same. I've even suggested a modification to the current kickers that would not be hard to implement and would go a long way to reducing the number of tournaments affected by the bubble issue.

63 players is one of my least favourites: anything more than one loss and you miss the cut. ugly!
 
NoPoke said:
63 players is one of my least favourites: anything more than one loss and you miss the cut. ugly!
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31 players and you can even miss the cut with a single loss.
I'd rather play 6 rounds while knowing I need to win 5 to definitely make the cut, than playing 5 rounds while knowing I need to win 4 to have a 60 % chance of making the cut (cause usually I'm among the other 40 %).

Indroducing kicker to 6 at 24 players would btw help here.
 
I'm not sure how I feel about point distribution changes. However, I would like to add some points:

Two tournaments I have been to just this cities season have been above the 62 player kicker (Masters). I went X-2 at one, and bubbled at 18th. Went X-2 at another and got points for 12th, even though I missed Cut. This makes me think two things:

1. I am guessing the 62+ Kicker is more common than realized.
2. I honestly think the system works pretty well for 62+... I don't feel like I should have gotten points at 18th. That being said, when you don't hit that, the system gets pretty frustrating- bubbling at 9th without points is no fun at all.
 
I'd like to see Opponent's win % drop out the worst opponent's record.

You have no control over who you are paired with Round 1 and you shouldn't be penalized for being paired with a theme deck and beating it. Most of the really egregious issues would be resolved with this sort of change.

I will also point out the solution organized chess has chosen. Round 1, the roster is ordered by ELO rating and the top half is paired against the bottom half of the field with 1 playing 33, 2 playing 34, 3 playing 35, etc. Consequently, the higher rated players play stronger competition in Round 1. In subsequent rounds, the roster for each record type is ordered just as it is in Pokemon, by opponent's win %. This also avoids the Round 1 problem hurting your resistance.
 
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FunnyBear: the pairing algorithm is random at all times within specific age groups and match records.
 
I did not know that. Still, doing Rd 1 using ELO would avoid a lot of the complaints about top players Rd 1 pairings to opponents that go on to lose out. So would dropping out the worst result.
 
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Two problems with that...

1) Not every TO is as fast as the players would like with uploading the tournament results. I've known TOs to take up to a week to upload. Most are pretty quick, night-of. But not always.

2) Most tournament locations do not have internet access. This is the big one. In order to use ELO in a system that can update daily or faster, a constant internet access point is necessary.

Basically, it's too difficult to maintain consistency using a system like what you propose.
 
bullados said:
Two problems with that...

1) Not every TO is as fast as the players would like with uploading the tournament results. I've known TOs to take up to a week to upload. Most are pretty quick, night-of. But not always.

2) Most tournament locations do not have internet access. This is the big one. In order to use ELO in a system that can update daily or faster, a constant internet access point is necessary.

Basically, it's too difficult to maintain consistency using a system like what you propose.
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What if TOM were updated in a way so that the first round of a tournament didn't affect your opp. Win percentage? If the complaint is that first-turn pairings are too random, having the first round act as a "seeding" round should fix that problem. Sorry if this sounds completely crazy. I'm running on too little sleep right now.
 
espeon200 said:
What if TOM were updated in a way so that the first round of a tournament didn't affect your opp. Win percentage? If the complaint is that first-turn pairings are too random, having the first round act as a "seeding" round should fix that problem. Sorry if this sounds completely crazy. I'm running on too little sleep right now.
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Somebody will always play the Undefeated during the tournament. Somebody will always play against the 1-loss player during the tournament. And somebody will always play against the 1-for (as the 0-for will usually drop at some point). Why should the first round be any different?
 
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