BEAST - Bannerlord Early Access Skirmish Tournament

[Mabons]

The biggest issue no matter what system is used is finding that balance of fairness and close matches while also not shielding top or bottom teams from each other.

I think Unity dropping out (and other teams in other divisions) has just made it look a lot worse and more awkward than it actually is. Had Unity played we can't say whether they would have literally lost all their matches anyways and been basically the same situation anyways!

I'm afraid RR will cause alot more dropouts if I'm honest.
Won't certain teams, if they see they won't be able to reach much anymore, just quit playing and hand out defaults or just leave the tournament?

I will however say that this can be avoided in a RR style by not having playoffs for promotion/demotion, this way people will fight for every single point instead of handing out defaults then playing to save their skin in a playoff. When it can come down to round difference being the thing that demotes/promotes you, especially in short enough tournament length, teams won't be handing out defaults if they can help it.

Where round robin does have an issue is that for example in Div A, RM and DM seem to run away with their matches, but when they meet each other it's close. This means for (as an example of a 6 team division with DM1, RM, Res1, DoFortune, DR 1, and KWLight) 4 of their 5 weeks it's stomping their opponents and then one close match. That might kill off interest for those two teams and any other division where the skill difference is significant.

There is 26 teams in the current tournament, hopefully only 2 teams drop off going into the next one and that will allow 4 divisions of 6 teams each and a 5 week tournament. At the end of each tournament(should it prove successful in BEAST 3) the top team in each division moves up one, the bottom down one. This might also cause problems with certain divisions literally just rotating the same teams each tournament but if teams drop and new ones come in that might not be an issue after all as the skill levels will constantly change.

In any case, while I don't play Bannerlord at the moment, should I return to a game with a reasonable playerbase still, it won't be the devs I thank, it will be the competitive community here and the admin team who have worked to keep an interest in the game ongoing, you're all doing a grand job with what you've got.

 

[Black_Corsair]

imho Buholz is perfect, but with no divisions (or with 2 max). And maybe with 6-7 matches per tourney instead of 5.
RR is okay if there are several divisions with 6-8 teams in each.

Most ppl voted for RR, but all divisions have different number off teams, so div A would need only 7 weeks to play all matches, div B - 11 weeks, and div C - 15 weeks. Sounds weird. And as Mabons said with RR there would be much more matches with great power differences between teams, which will kill interest both for powerful teams, and for weak teams at the same time. And only average teams would get enough interesting close matches.
And I m pretty sure most ppl, who voted for RR, didn't think a lot about these problems, no offense. =)

 

[The_Great_White]

Thtat's why you:
1. Don't bring any other famous warband team into Div A from the beginning
2. Split bigger divisions

RR also gives you the opportunity to fight other opponents where you can achieve victories. We played only teams from the top half of the c division and missed playing the rest (who would be on our actual skill level)

 

[Aeronwen]

Unity dropout problem should have been dealt with moving one team from B to A and from C to B immediately. This would still be messy but easier to deal with and more importantly no chain def wins. Dropouts are a problem irrelevant of the system used (or could have been used) except Double Elim, and preferably they would have been eliminated in double elim before they impoloded. Double Elim would also take around the same time (if there were 4 divisions and RR in Div D since their number might not be 8 at all times).

If teams imploding is a fright for the admin team, they should never trust in any other system than Double Elim since teams are most likely to implode get eliminated before they do or they only ruin one match.

As some people have referenced, buscholz is aplicable when there are a large amount of teams in a single division and I think this oversight is what caused some teams to have a set of unsatisfactory matches.
My main gripe with the system is it nullifying the importance of Round Differential. Altough my team didnt experience it this tourney, the feeling of winning by rounds but drawing due to maps should be avoided at all costs (this happened to some teams).

I also beleive for our community; dividing C into C and D and having a round robin is the most civil choice atm, and for the first time in Bannerlord democracy agrees with me.

Edit: For example WTF has same points with RS2, and has better Round Differential than WTF and according to rounds has drawn us once and bet us once but yet they are the last place instead of us. Which must feel awful I presume. (It was cool to find an example that we were the bad guys ahah)

Teams self selected their group, and they were in no way sorted at the start of the tournament. Therefore there would be no obvious way to select a team to move up.
Forcing 2 teams into a higher group just to maintain an even number in the higher group would not have been fair and such measures in the past have cause the moved team to drop.
Then there is the issue of the moved teams points, taking over the figures for the dropped team is not fair but neither is carrying on the figures from a lower group. Both would have a distorting effect on the table.

You may like to consider that if a team has played generally lower skilled teams that team is likely to have a higher round differential than a team that has played generally higher skilled teams. Since the BHS is only considered when 2 teams are on the same points it produces a much fairer result than round differential (which is ofc considered next if 2 teams have the same points and the same BHS).

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Thtat's why you:
1. Don't bring any other famous warband team into Div A from the beginning
2. Split bigger divisions

RR also gives you the opportunity to fight other opponents where you can achieve victories. We played only teams from the top half of the c division and missed playing the rest (who would be on our actual skill level)

Dof were in an unusual situation because of an odd number of teams.

In week 1 you had no opponent. Admins had a long discussion about how to treat this but in the end it was decided to treat it the same as a default. Therefore for the week 2 matchups you were in the pool of teams that had 3 points and the highest round differential. This meant you had an opponent who had also won their first match.

However your representation of the teams you played is not accurate. Going by the final points for the teams you played you had progressively easier matches.

Dof played H5(15 points),Cintra(12), H52(6), and jinej(3).

Which is a clear indication that the ladder worked well and sorted the teams appropriately.

 

[The_Great_White]

Dof were in an unusual situation because of an odd number of teams.

In week 1 you had no opponent. Admins had a long discussion about how to treat this but in the end it was decided to treat it the same as a default. Therefore for the week 2 matchups you were in the pool of teams that had 3 points and the highest round differential. This meant you had an opponent who had also won their first match.

Which led to 2 stomps and one loss. Splitting the current division in half, we would've had the loss against HV2 and then so many more exciting matchups, with defeats sure, but maybe also with some victories.
It's easier to motivate people for this than, in this particular case, for the Ladder system.

 

[Aeronwen]

imho Buholz is perfect, but with no divisions (or with 2 max). And maybe with 6-7 matches per tourney instead of 5.
RR is okay if there are several divisions with 6-8 teams in each.

Most ppl voted for RR, but all divisions have different number off teams, so div A would need only 7 weeks to play all matches, div B - 11 weeks, and div C - 15 weeks. Sounds weird. And as Mabons said with RR there would be much more matches with great power differences between teams, which will kill interest both for powerful teams, and for weak teams at the same time. And only average teams would get enough interesting close matches.
And I m pretty sure most ppl, who voted for RR, didn't think a lot about these problems, no offense. =)

For a RR the div sizes would have to be changed. As I have consistently said, teams will find it harder to maintain motivation with RR. I would strongly suggest that only the top 2 divs use RR, many div C teams are much less likely to complete all their matches in RR which leads to a snowball effect.

 

[mrArgentum]

Where round robin does have an issue is that for example in Div A, RM and DM seem to run away with their matches, but when they meet each other it's close. This means for (as an example of a 6 team division with DM1, RM, Res1, DoFortune, DR 1, and KWLight) 4 of their 5 weeks it's stomping their opponents and then one close match. That might kill off interest for those two teams and any other division where the skill difference is significant.

Competitive teams playing tournaments for win. Or take a place they deserved. They doesn't cares about interesting match they must play or boring. The main thing is win. In current situation DM and RM deserved their 1st and 2nd places. But KW is absolutely NOT deserved their 3rd place. Team who never played against RM or DM during tournament and lost to DR take a 3rd place. Really?

 

[Aeronwen]

Competitive teams playing tournaments for win. Or take a place they deserved. They doesn't cares about interesting match they must play or boring. The main thing is win. In current situation DM and RM deserved their 1st and 2nd places. But KW is absolutely NOT deserved their 3rd place. Team who never played against RM or DM during tournament and lost to DR take a 3rd place. Really?

Contrary to what one might reasonably expect from an overview of Argentums posts, this has a grain of truth to it. KW light played DR and lost, so they had an opponent from the lower half of the table, having won that match they went to the middle of the table and drew twice. That left them in the lower half of the table and next in line for no opponent.
Recognising from the BHS scores that KW had an easier path through the tournament there was some discussion of introducing a third place playoff match. However this would be difficult to justify for just one division and where the teams have differing points but it is something to remember for the future.
We could maybe consider a rule that where teams end up next to each other in the table and there is a big - ish discrepancy in BHS then a placing match should be played.

 

[TheBard]

Deutschritter 1 had to fight tooth and nail for each point my team scored and I didn't get a defwin, nor would I ever ask for one, I prefer fighting for my points. And I had bad luck with crashes in my last match.
I felt a bit down to see our "rival" overtake us like this with a defwin. On the other hand that draw we produced against them is debatable as well and here I come to the point: this is just how tournaments are. We can try our best to mitigate this effect, but there will be always room for improvement.

Tournament administration is doing this in their free time. Please always keep that in mind.

In a ladder like this I think everything not place 1+2 is considered not the winners anyway, so I don't mind it too much.

 

[tom54p]

Will the nation tournament or whatever it is called going to stop you from making beast 3 or not?
Because as some people said it will be' a problem with the clan system if people have to switch clans multiple times. Even though i personally didn't like some of the admin choices, i still honestly think beast is keeping the competitive/mp community alive so it would suck to put it on hold for that

 

[Ikea Knight]

We still want to host Beast 3. There has been a little bit of hold up in the adminstration. But I will post the sign up as soon as I can.

We are also worried about having two tournaments at the same time but that's just the way things are right now.
I personally think we lose more players all together if there is only the Nations League because lot's of clans won't be able to participate.

 

[Aprikosenmann]

Beast 3 should start 3 weeks after final. Change my mind.
The break between 1 and 2 was way to long.

 

[Ikea Knight]

Beast 3 should start 3 weeks after final. Change my mind.
The break between 1 and 2 was way to long.

Agreed. On both things. We are looking to start on either the 9th or 16th

 

[Aeronwen]

Will the nation tournament or whatever it is called going to stop you from making beast 3 or not?
Because as some people said it will be' a problem with the clan system if people have to switch clans multiple times. Even though i personally didn't like some of the admin choices, i still honestly think beast is keeping the competitive/mp community alive so it would suck to put it on hold for that

Usually I would prefer to give way for other tourneys and often ppl wanting to host discuss together before announcing, but that didn't happen this time. I agree that delaying BEAST3 would be bad for the community but I also worry about the effect the nations tournament will have on teams.

 

[TheBard]

I already pointed out how much problems the parallel hosting of this NC-style tournament will be and the only answer I got was that "this is not NC, this is different".

Basicly this now comes down to the clan leaders of the clans involved in BEAST if they want to put with constantly reinviting people into their parent teams for officials/scrims or not. I could understand every clan leader who'd say no to that, because it's more work than necessary and quite annoying and the schedules have to match, effectively also shutting down any danger for their parent teams that these can not train due to conflicts with the nation's teams.

Waiting for the ENLs conclusion would be also unfair to ~3/4th of the community who are left out.

 

[The_Great_White]

I already pointed out how much problems the parallel hosting of this NC-style tournament will be and the only answer I got was that "this is not NC, this is different".

Even tho thread is tagged with "nations cup" lol

Wouldn't be too afraid of big losses, doubt there are more teams than the current 4 or 5 who'll sign up for the ENL

 

[tom54p]

We still want to host Beast 3. There has been a little bit of hold up in the adminstration. But I will post the sign up as soon as I can.

Thank you for your quick answer.

Usually I would prefer to give way for other tourneys and often ppl wanting to host discuss together before announcing, but that didn't happen this time. I agree that delaying BEAST3 would be bad for the community but I also worry about the effect the nations tournament will have on teams.

Like whity says i think that not that many teams will sign up for that tournament.
The problem is the annoying management of the in-game clan system which for sure will create multiple problems really.

 

[TheBard]

The problem is the annoying management of the in-game clan system which for sure will create multiple problems really.

I'm not someone who's torpeding any competition (the more the better) but the devs actually should focus on delivering content and fix stuff before adjusting a system which does not do all the stuff we would like to see but is essentially working fine. So better don't get your hopes up that the devs will adress this as top priority.

 

[tom54p]

I'm not someone who's torpeding any competition (the more the better) but the devs actually should focus on delivering content and fix stuff before adjusting a system which does not do all the stuff we would like to see but is essentially working fine. So better don't get your hopes up that the devs will adress this as top priority.

I completely agree with this, there are way more important things to fix and as a matter of fact the developers completely lost all my trust with the latest blog.
With my post i was more referring to finding a way we, as a community, could find to avoid this nonsense.

 

[Samuuel]

I would really appreciate a different system. This tournament my team played 2 different clans in total.
Gran Turk x2
HV II x1
HV x 2

Doesn't exactly give us much in the way of match variety.