Official Tournament Settings

Hey there. Consider this step 2 of getting AWBW back on track as a fun, competitive game. I will be introducing new Official AWBW tournaments, with signups starting this week and the first games to be played next week. The objective is to have solid tournament maps with both quick, simple settings alongside longer, more strategic options for running tournaments.


Tournament Maps will primarily draw from the Persistent Map pool, as outlined here:
https://isndev.forumotion.co.uk/t697-persistent-maps-and-rotation-maps

They can also be seen by clicking below:

Map List as of October 12, 2014:

There will be two formats, one for longer tournaments and one for shorter tournaments, as recommended by several competitive AWBW players. These will be known as Long Form and Short Form. Short Form will likely be used more often than Long Form for the time being, but it is good to have the framework for both formats in written, easily accessible form.

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Tournament Picks and Bans in Short Form will be much simpler than Long Form. Short Form is oriented towards single games and Single Elimination, but can work for Bo3 sets or larger. Here is the basic idea of of Short Form.

• Single Game
  
• The highest seeded player of the two players selects 1 map from the Persistent Maps to play.
  
• The lowest seeded player of the two players will determine what Tier of COs will be played on the map from a list of 3 Tier choices for that map (For example, High Tier, Mid Tier, or Bottom Tier).
  
• These are the same CO Tiers that are used in the Global League on each map, and will be posted publicly in the future.
  
• The players then set the game up themselves as specified from this Pick and Ban phase, and play the game out.
  
• Whenever a game or set is completed, the players must post the link to the completed game and/or replay of the game to verify the results.
  

In this example, Mori and Walker play a fictional Short Form game.
Walker is a higher seed than Mori in this example.

• Walker selects Beyond Eternity from the Persistent Maps.
  
• Mori selects Low Tier for the Beyond Eternity game.
  

Mori goes on to win the game versus Walker, and Mori advances to the next bracket. Walker in this case would be eliminated, or move on to Losers Bracket, etc. While Short Form is intended to be used for quick, decisive single games, Short Form can also be used in Best of 3 or larger format, with one simple addition.

• For the rest of the games of that Best of 3 Set, whoever lost the previous game gets to either pick the next Map (and their opponent then picks the CO Tier), or defer the map selection to their opponent and then pick the CO Tier themselves. Neither player can choose any maps that have already been chosen in the same Best of 3 (or larger) set.
  

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Tournament Picks and Bans for Long Form will be modeled off of the Pick and Ban systems from games such as DotA 2, Starcraft 2, and League of Legends. Lets start with a Best of 3 example set, where both players will play out a maximum of 3 games to determine who would move on in the tournament. In this example:

• Best of 3
  
• Each player alternates in banning maps, starting with the highest seeded player of the two players, until each player has banned 4 maps, for a total of 8 maps banned.
  
• This leaves 3 total maps left out of the 11 Persistent Maps, which will be played with starting Alphabetically from the top of the list, and working down through the 3 unbanned maps until the Best of 3 is completed.
  
• Before the first game is played, the lowest seeded player of the two players will determine what Tier of COs will be played on the first map choice from a list of 3 Tier choices for that map (For example, High Tier, Mid Tier, or Bottom Tier).
  
• These are the same CO Tiers that are used in the Global League on each map, and will be posted publicly in the future.
  
• The players then set the game up themselves as specified from this Pick and Ban phase, and play the game out.
  
• For the rest of the games of that Best of 3 Set, whoever lost the previous game will determine what Tier of COs will be played on the next map.
  
• Whenever a game or set is completed, the players must post the link to the completed game and/or replay of the game to verify the results.
  

So in short, maps are banned, CO Tier is picked on the first map remaining that was not banned, and then the game begins on that map. CO Tier picks continue from whoever had lost the previous game until the full set is completed. The process starts over at the beginning of the Pick and Ban phase at the start of the next set (after one of the two players has been eliminated, or knocked to Losers Bracket, etc).

In the example of a Best of 5, the process is the same with the change of 3 bans per player instead of 4. That means 6 maps total are banned for that set, leaving 5 maps left to be played out alphabetically, starting from the top. We can extrapolate from here to see how Best of 7, 9, and 11 would function.

All of this will be managed on this forum on new posts designated for each game, with the link to the game and/or replays of the game posted to verify the results of each game played. This creates an environment where everyone can spectate the games, tournament organizers can verify if the players are active or not, and wins and losses will be well documented for the future. This also creates a system where any two players can play a game, or a set of games, with tournament settings with the confidence that Official Tournaments will obey the same rules.

This does not affect any fan-made or community run tournaments, simply the Official Tournaments run by the AWBW Map Committee or similar personnel, however, community run tournaments are 100% welcome to use these rules if they choose to.


In this example, Mori and Walker play a fictional Best of 3.
Walker is a higher seed than Mori, and bans first.

Ban Phase:

• Walker bans All Roads Lead to Sol
  
• Mori bans Shadows chase you endlessly
  
• Walker bans Aphotic Arena
  
• Mori bans Highway to Hell
  
• Walker bans Bel'Shir Beach
  
• Mori bans Bible Black
  
• Walker bans Shangri-La
  
• Mori bans Blood on my Hands
  

This leaves:

• Beyond Eternity
  
• Black Patch War
  
• Iconic
  

To be played out in that order, starting with Beyond Eternity. Beyond Eternity has specific Low Tier, Mid Tier, and Top Tier settings available (These will all be linked on a Global League and Tournament post in the future). Mori is the lowest seed, and chooses Top Tier.

Walker and Mori play out the game, and Mori wins. The next game is on Black Patch War. Walker chooses the CO Tier this time due to the previous loss, and goes on to win that game. The third game is on Iconic, and the CO Tier is picked by Mori due to the loss in game 2. Mori goes on to lose game 3 versus Walker, and Walker advances to the next Set. Mori in this case would be eliminated, or move on to Losers Bracket, etc.

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As you can see, Short Form is much faster than Long Form, and will likely be used more than Long Form, but I think it will be good to have the framework in place for both options. Please post all of your feedback here when possible, I want to make sure this is all clearly worded and understandable.

I think BO3 may take too much time...
If the tournament last for a long time, players will lose the enthusiasm of fight.
The previous tournament GT2 failed to be completed for this reason.

That's a fair perspective. I could come up with a more simplistic pick/ban system for fast games, which I can detail later on. Currently busy streaming another game on Twitch TV, then getting breakfast. After that, I might be able to make a format for faster than BO3, this is just a framework after all.

Based on jackcool's suggestion, I divided everything into two formats:

• Short Form - For fast, decisive games.
  
• Long Form - For long, strategic games.

Please get back to me with feedback on Short Form whenever possible, as it's the best way I could think of to balance the decision-making between both players but also get games started fast and finished fast.

Well, I'm up for it. Sounds interesting, and original. I do agree that there needs to be severe time restrictions on this if we want round one to be over in less than 2 years - I remember tournament matches between benbever, and ultrastorm taking around a year to complete, heh.

The situation in GL now is most of players may need 1 to 2 days for complete one turn.
A game may need to be finish at least one month.......
We have a Tournament between Chinese players (32 players)
the tournament start from June and now is only in second round (with some of them boot)........
Hence I afraid the Long form game may not able to finish.
Anyway, i still support the plan of short form game.

I agree, Short Form seems like the best right now. Like I said, this is mostly just a framework for tournament setups, and I'm 100% open for feedback and criticism for it. The objective is to make picks and bans for maps and CO Tiers interesting, but also move things along as quickly as possible in an easy to understand format. With that in mind, Short Form is probably the best, unless someone wants to come up with something simpler.

What I like about Short Form is that the players get to pick the maps and tiers in question, which is cool, and also allows them to play games without a third party setting up the lobby. It gives them a level of freedom that I personally think is really great.

However, it also might slow down tournaments due to a lack of understanding on which COs are in what tier and so on, so Step 3 of revitalizing AWBW is definitely going to be posting a database for the current Persistent Maps, along with the map settings available for them. That should increase our knowledge base and be a handy resource even outside of tournaments.

Count me in!

The short form would be ideal to start with, to keep things simple. As the community adapts to the short form style, you could then introduce the long form to cater to players wanting longer, strategic games. For now, it might help to keep it short and sweet.

As for educating those about CO Tiers, you could redirect them to Hellraider's CO Tier List to help keep them informed on CO choices for their games. One crazy thought I have is to list about 3-5 recommended CO choices (with a brief summary of their advantages/weaknesses) for each map that will be played in this tournament from the persistent map list. That way, it would help guide new players in choosing appropriate COs for their games and to show them why they are choosing the COs they picked. Just my disheveled 2 cents.