What do you want to see in a tournament? #Hearts #Rainbows #TooGirly? #DontJudgeTheHash

i wanted to do that ages ago but..... who actually wants to see an am play, like i don't even know how to finish a game and i know the decent players who watch me always yell at me for doing this or that, watching a bronze in the tourny i think would be just painful for people? If you guys think differently let me know, ^^

That was an incredible elitest statement

But it's still #truth

it wasn't meant to be an elitist comment @reptarking, i wanted to do one ages ago for the players in my stream, but then i realised no one would watch it and they're probably be disappointed that no one watched them, jeez.

To be honest what makes good viewing comes down to two things:

1: balanced matches!
2: everyone knowing the game well.

The latter shouldn't be a problem for anyone upper silver and above. The problem with players in bronze is usually they don't really know the game yet and I agree watching someone struggle with how an asteaous works wouldn't be good viewing.

Once you get above that you need balanced matches. Watching @elodea stomp a silver player in under 3 minutes would also get old pretty quickly. However watching an upper silver / lower gold match should be pretty even and could be an interesting watch imo.

I've been seriously surprised by upper silver and gold league players when I've played them on the ladder. I also think it's possible at that level we could see some unusual play styles. Once you get to the top you have to play in an optimal way if you want to have a hope of winning. the lower leauges have more room to experiment...

We have done one before, believe myself and neptunio casted it and tried to give the players tips while we done so. It can be hard to watch, but that's only for the top few players, not much of a gap these days amongst players. A no ubers allowed tourney could be fun to watch,

Interesting idea!

It's more to do with enabling newer/lesser known/lesser able players into the tournaments; as it is, every casted game sees the same selection of a few players appearing almost every time, with little variation. There's neither incentive nor opportunity for any ranks below high platinum to get involved in "official" matches, and I think that aside from being systematically elitist, it'll damage long-term competitive play by not supporting or encouraging "lower" level competitors

a tourney were i can scream on the screen for how much of a noob you guys are ? (*ignores that he is like the worst noob there is*) .... IAMIN!!!!!! no realy i don't care if its pros or average joes or a mix of both ...

So does this mean I'd be considered a pa amateur/scrub/noob since I'm unranked

play a couple online rounds ... see how you perform ...

look on the bright side ... you are likely to find more pla,ers than a uberranked ... i guess ...

Then git gud kid

Well the official ladder is a way to test / prove your ability... I know you've been playing for long enough so you could well be a dark horse of the tourney... Btw do you have / use pa stats? I think that would be a viable alternative to the official ladder for those that aren't ranked...

The only tournaments that do not enable new players are invite only, and those are super rare. I only recall two from memory. Those that are open to all (basically every tournament ever) are by no means 'systematically elitist', which is basically an insult to every tournament host who put down their own money to fund a tournament for others. Open to all is equal access. There is nothing unfair or elitist about this unless one has a preconceived self entitlement that the money belongs to them.

Just because one knows they have a low chance of winning doesn't mean they shouldn't enter. With that logic, they are only shooting themselves in the foot. If winning is all the new player is interested in, then they should infact be entering every single tournament they can and practicing to get better at the game instead of looking at tournament hosts to provide a kiddie pool and false sense of achievement.

Tournaments are all about working for the win, and that's what provides good games for the viewers. No-one wants to watch two players spam 9000 fabbers, never expand metal and then make poorly executed jabs at each other every 10 minutes. That's not elitist, that's just viewers being time poor.

Hosts provide new player opportunities every single time they fund a tournament. How is a bit of extra cash not an incentive? It's not a handout, you gotta work for it. The good players who enter are also a great opportunity to learn actual proper build orders, tactics, and strategies that are found to be most powerful. Instead of wasting all their time learning bad habits in artificially low tier groups that in the end don't get them anywhere.

Story time...
Let me tell you, it took me 4 tournaments and several months before i was able to even get past the second round of anything. The amount of preparation i was doing during that time was totally not reflective of the results i was getting. Infact it took a devastating loss in the community cup to totally re-orientate my entire paradigm when it came to looking at how to play the game (fabber counting and timings). It was literally because of learning from this loss (and many others), doing my own research and testing, and losing against players better than me like matiz, neptunio, clopse, kisel, pt4h that I was able to breeze through basically every single 1v1 tournament since.

"oh you are asian, your apm is just naturally better". No! If you want to talk about apm, I came into PA a total mouse clicker with an apm of like 10 and no real prior experience in rts's. There is no glass ceiling, it's just about doing a fair bit of practice with the right attitude. I've seen players improve dramatically as a result of this such as Smithforce, Alpha, the NW guys, max when he was more active, and even violetania (though she is lazy about it now). And i'm sure there are others out there i don't know about.

My map awareness and unit management has degraded heaps due to lack of losses and motivation to practice. Now adays I solely rely on knowing how to play a map better and exploiting something that is OP because i'm lazy and a baddy. I don't mean to come across as arrogant by any means, only to emphasise that losses are just as good if not better than wins.

TL;DR
If a player doesn't have the mental strength to take losses, or the attitude of simply having fun (it's a game), then i have to say tournaments arn't for them in the first place. Tournament hosts can only do so much to cater to the needs of many different groups, and i don't think it's too much to ask players in turn to 'grow a pair of balls'. Just enter instead of asking hosts to provide a bunch of baby seals they can club in a safe environment.

I especially like the "baby seals they can club in a safe environment" comment x'D.

Whilst I agree with you for the most part, I'd like to offer a counter view to this as well...

There are a large number of players who are competent and against evenly matched opponents potentially a very good watch for viewers, who are also not at the very top level. The current 'flat' tournament structure of PA means *all open events* usually include the top players making it almost a forgone conclusion for everyone below that bracket that they cannot win. Case in point is the recent 2 v 2 tourney, I am a *very* experienced RTS player, I've won small tourneys in my time at games like TA and Spring, and Max as you've pointed out is also good player. We were on absolute top form beating a number of other good teams but there was *no* way we are going to beat a team consisting of 2 of the very best players in the game. The final was a forgone conclusion from the start and I can't say I enjoyed it all that much, heck we didn't take a single game against you guys.

If you look at many sports and so on, there are usually lower level events and tournaments, that pit similar skilled groups of contestants together. Winning one of these lower level events then provides promotion into the higher league. Now this is made more difficult in PA due to the low number of players, however I still think having an event that caters to players outside the top bracket is a nice idea.

A great example of this was the recent 'evil twins' tournament. The qualifier event was very open- which makes good viewing. That imo is more interesting to watch than something like binary stars where you can predict who's going to win before the thing starts...

If I don't enter a tournament because I don't think I can win, then that's kind of a self fulfilling prophecy. And if I go into a game thinking I have no chance at all why bother, then I will likely lose. You can see it in the hesitant way you and max played in the binary stars finals which was a real shame because i think you were definitely equally matched from the third round we played.

I don't think clopse and i stacked the deck, nor was it an effortless win. We played well because we had practiced together, strategised, and tried to get our teamwork down with figuring out a system that worked well. It wasn't because we are good 1v1 players. We struggled to even get to the finals, and very likely would have lost the semis if not for alpha and smithforce throwing a game.

Yes absolutely there are many multi tiered leagues that function by inherently driving players to achieve the best they can through qualification. They don't function through restriction though. The low tier doesn't function as a low tier without a high tier concurrently running.

I agree with you that these would be good for PA, however there are currently no leagues that run this way. Organising and setting these up takes alot of ongoing work, specifically in the context of violet's one shot tournament we have to be realistic about what we demand to see from her.

Well thanks for the compliment on the game- in our defence myself and Max had done quite a lot of practice which is why I think we got as far as we did. As I said at the time you and Clopse deserved the win so I have no qualms with the outcome.

I do think there is an opportunity in general to do some 'league' based tournaments based off Uber's official ladder. A part of the excitement of a tournament (for me at least) is feeling like you have a shot at winning and whilst me and Max maybe did have more of a chance than we thought, what about someone from the Gold league? These guys aren't bad players by any stretch, however they're also not likely to be very motivated by a tournament featuring lots of top level players.

As I say I think a few more 'evil twins' style events would be a nice idea- that way everyone is included. That is also why I like the concept of Pro-Am. Violet and Clopse for example proved to be a formidable combination in the last one.

As for @violetania and what she would like to host, ultimately it's up to her. I agree it's not reasonable for her to create and manage an entire league structure, and at the end of the day a 'normal' tournament would be fine. I just like the concept of doing *something* that adds a bit of a wild card factor to the whole thing and maybe encourages some of the lower league players to give it a shot. You are spot on with the idea that if you go into it 'knowing' you can't win you probably wont and I think there are probably quite a lot of potential future top players lurking in the lower leagues that need a bit of chance to see that actually maybe they could be top player.

If you have any ideas on better ways to achieve this I'm open to suggestions. I suppose the first question is are there any Bronze / Silver / Gold league players that actually want to play an event but are put off by the usual tournament crowd?

Yep I have PA stats. Problem is its filled with a bunch of frankly crap games as well. I generally leave PA stats on all the time whereas some others only enable stats on the matches that they are playing really seriously on.
If you're interested heres a link to my stats page (although I doubt many would be interested)
http://pastats.com/player?player=72109
The avg apm is screwed since it takes into account some of my really old pa games where I was just getting used to stuff still.

EDIT:
For example the stats show my avg apm as being 75 which is inaccurate. Nowdays my apm is generally over 120.

Maybe open the tournament at all level players but then do a pool with uber/plat players who are mixed in team with all others lower level players? I found that will be cool and we can't know the issue.