Cup Sumary + Player Feedback

[X-Bomb]

I am concious there are many threads knocking about and we dont really need any more. But I think in any major event we need a summary and feedback.

I am very pleased with the way the cup went. It started with a lot of interest and there was a certain buzz around the forums and IRC and genuine interest. For the first time in ages it felt like people knew when games were actually scheduled and came to play them.

The first few games came thick and fast and we had UTV, shoutcast and quite extensive match reporting.

Obviously after the first round some interested died down as teams were eliminated and the number of games needed to be played decreased but we still had a good following (even from people not participating)

For sure the cup was not the best cup ever hosted here but alot of that is down to player numbers. We cant do a lot about that.

I noticed Torp is interested in forming a new cup in January so feedback for this cup will definately help him.

The length of the cup:
Took too long - should we have a shorter period of time between games , Was the cup too Short?

Format:
Was 5v5 correct for this cup? should it have been 6v6 or 4v4?
Should it have been a straight knockout or groupings? If so how would you have grouped it

Picking process:
Was it too complicated, were the teams even enough?
do you have suggestions for a better way to pick - perhaps a way to keep it even AND play with players you would prefer.

I felt the picking process i thought of gave the captain a chance to pick players they liked and keep the teams even, but it seems not everyone agreed.

Before you answer this, please consider the following:
- we now have a small player base (i didnt think 6v6 was possible, given that we would have no room for backups)
- we have to try and keep the teams even, otherwise nobody can be bothered!

My thought: 1 problem (and my team nearly suffered this in the final (yako for kd)) having a backup replace one of your better players just made the teams really uneven - what could we do to conquer this?

Cup coverage:
IT was good (UTV, Shoutcast and Forum Coverage) - i dont think many can complain but other ideas welcome

Any other thoughts welcome - Post in torps thread if you have suggestions for his new cup.

Thanks to the following people:
The 7 Captains: D1sc, Supermic, Hoi, Twnz, Wish, Salva. Meteor - without your volunteering this cup was not possible
Useless - Cup reporting (awesome job really!)
Disc/Od/Solar/Loco - UTV Coverage
Banshee - Shoutcast! was brilliant
MyM - Server and help as always
Timo - Cup Stats
Quasi - For captains private forum - really helped us for picking
HTML - Cup prize
All participants

I dont think i missed anyone significant out - but if i did, sorry and thanks to you to!

 

[html]

length of cup was ok cept for the final delay, I think the time frame should stay, 1 month for all matches played and a 2 weeks or more prior to the cup for organisation, would be good too if teams were all picked say a week before the first match, so some practices can take place.

6v6 would be better but due to player numbers I felt 5v5 was right should the amount of players/interest for the next cup go down again i'd be up for 4v4 but nothing less than that.

seems to me the player picking process was overly long, perhaps captains should book a time, match style, and all do it live. and also would be kinda cool to do it publicly on an irc channel thats like moderated and only captains can talk.

Perhaps, like i've said in torps thread, rules should be a bit more bendable about subbing to avoid single player imbalance/match delay. Any sub should do as long as both captains agree, then again we don't want lower ranked players to be pushed aside and im not sure how to solve that Mandatory lower ranked player rotation sounds awfully complicated. I guess captains with common sense would be the best thing.... but then again, when it's WARRRRR, don't we all want to win ?

cup coverage was excellant idd, gj to all involved, especially useless!

 

[Thrasher (_!_)]

we don't want lower ranked players to be pushed aside and im not sure how to solve that

6 players per team when the matches are 5v5 really sucks as the lesser skilled player. Whilst I appreciate the captain is going to field his/her strongest team I think the cup should be 5v5 and teams are of 5 i.e. no spares. If someone can't play then a sub of similar skill rating can be used.

 

[Axl_Rose]

Well my only problem (not for me specifically) is that not every1 who signed up actually got to play. A solution for this might be to decide what amount of players you want to be participating beforehand and then close sign-ups once that amount is reached.

The people who decide they also want to play, but are too late can be backups, or incase this number gets high enough you could expand the number of participants.

I also agree with thrasher, so no extra players appointed to a team. To me at least it seemed players were quite eager to play their matches, so the availability and activity was much higher than in the league.

 

[sneez]

I also agree that not everybody who signed go to play (often). Especially teams who got out in the first round.
Furthermore it was a really nice cup, epic coverage, utv, Useless, shoutcast and awesome community

 

[Useless]

The length of the cup:

My only quibble (and this is because I was doing the reports, although I'm sure some other people must have been disappointed) was the scheduling conflicts. In a cup with only nine matches it should be possible to avoid booking two matches on the same night but different servers, yet somehow this happened not once but twice. And I still have people asking me for reports of matches I wasn't able to watch. This is something Torp might want to note: if a cup match has been scheduled for x-day, no other cup match may use that day, or something. This would give everyone a chance to see every single game, and surely it wouldn't be tough to pick another day if the one you wanted is already chosen?

Format:

This is also to do with the length of the cup but it's a format thing really. I would have liked if each QF match had been over two legs, rather than the decision being down to the captains. It was kinda weird having two QF matches of sudden death, and four other QF matches over two stretches. Making each QF match a two leg affair would maybe make things more tense, as well as giving the teams who would have otherwise lost (ie. Salva, Supermic) more time to get themselves moulded into a proper team. In both Salva's and Supermic's case I thought it was unfair that they got put out after just one match, as neither team or captain deserved it. I realise they chose to play one match only and that's fine, but forcing them into at least two would give everyone playing in the cup at least two games and therefore more fun. For example, DJ getting put out after only one match even though he played a blinding game? Not right imo.

I thought 5v5 was perfect tbh. 6v6 is a real bugger to spectate if you're trying to keep tabs on everyone and it would be tough for UTV too. And 4v4 is just a bit sparse and not enough people would get a look in. 5v5 turned out to be ideal and I think it would be wrong to change it just for the sake of changing it.

Picking process:

Apart from XB's "choose a number between 19 and 3 billion, don't tell anyone except your mum what it is, pick a card, any card, look deep into my eyes" piffle it was fine Keep it similar to pug picks, if it works it works. And for the players who ended up as backups but didn't get to play - sign up earlier next time!

My thought: 1 problem (and my team nearly suffered this in the final (yako for kd)) having a backup replace one of your better players just made the teams really uneven - what could we do to conquer this?

Introduce a rule that says that if one team turns up a player short to a match (ie. Team.XB missing Yak in the final) the opposition team must drop a player to even up the teams. BUT the player the second team drops is up to the captain of that team. Wish was good enough to drop Toone until Pete turned up to make it 5v5 and I think this was the ideal compromise, as it wasn't Wish's fault that XB was missing a player. So in my solution the teams are even on player numbers but the second team is not at a disadvantage, because even if the first team is missing its star player the second team still gets to decide if all it wants to do is drop its weakest player in reply, meaning the second team suffers no real disadvantage because of the first team's problems.

Also, I think players who signed up as backups need to be ranked as were the actual official players. Let's say Pete had been ranked with 10/10 value and Yako had been ranked I dunno 9/10. Have another rule, besides the one above, which states that any backup player that has to come in for a missing official player (ie. Pete for Yako) must have an equal or lower ranking, or else they can't join. So if Pete had been the only player in the backup list available to come in he wouldn't have been allowed, meaning that the first rule I mentioned would come into effect instead. If one rule fails, the other must be used, if you see what I mean.

Cup coverage:

I had great fun rambling rubbish with od^ while he did the UTV, great fun taking the piss out of d1sc while he tried to work it, great fun getting Banshee to accidentally play It's Raining Men over the shoutcast And so on. Coverage was great, I was glad to be a part of it. Hope next time is as good or better, I'll be there

 

[MeetYourMaker]

I thought there was a rule where the backups were ranked and only an equal or lower rated backup could play

Forcing the days may sometimes be difficult, I would guess weekends are always more popular for playing and if you want to limit duplicate matches then it may drag a competition out especially if you have limited numbers of players within a team

 

[Axl_Rose]

Annthony, about the 2 legs, for the QF. I believe that in our case it wouldnt have been possible to play two matches. With the availability of the players being quite an issue, especially combined with the small time stretch we had, to get the match pld.

 

[Useless]

Annthony, about the 2 legs, for the QF. I believe that in our case it wouldnt have been possible to play two matches. With the availability of the players being quite an issue, especially combined with the small time stretch we had, to get the match pld.

Yeah, I see your point, but this wouldn't always be an issue. Depends on who the players are, how the cup's organised, etc.