Posted on 06 August 2017 - 12:12 AM

Congratulations to KarliXon, JOYFUL, Charqed, Radioactivebeans, noeggs, EdoTricksPro, and Kikzo of Team HelloEveryoneMyNameIsKarliXon for taking home first place in today's EU 5v5 Arena tournament!

Disqualification:

To start off, a user from Team PrayForWin Ruby was found to be cheating today. He was caught by the Badlion Anti-Cheat Client, and so his team (who originally finished 3rd) has been DQed. Therefore, Team Leftnut officially takes 3rd place, and the $100 prize that goes with it. Unfortunately the Challonge bracket was already closed so we cannot update it to reflect this, but the results listed in this thread are accurate.

Input:

While we encountered a few setbacks this tournament, I still believe it ended up being a good experience, and I hope the community had as much fun watching as I did. Every tournament is a learning opportunity for us, as we figure out how to run more organized, competitive, and enjoyable tournaments.

This tournament was originally scheduled for last week, but due to unforeseen circumstances, it had to be pushed back to today. We are very sorry for any inconvenience this caused, but we hope the extra week gave a few times some extra time to figure out their rosters and polish their teamfighting skills. We experienced more difficulty this morning that had us worried we might need another delay: a significant number of competitors were having trouble running BAC. While BAC is extremely useful (it helped us find a cheater in the top 3 today!), these problems would have resulted in a number of teams not being able to compete. Ultimately, we made the decision to not require it today. If you had problems running BAC today, I urge you to make bug reports so that the issues can be resolved and BAC can be required in future prize pool tournaments.

A problem from over a year ago reappeared again today: If a match has a large number of spectators, the server will freeze when someone dies. This started to happen in the fourth round of the finals, and had a definite impact on the flow of the match. Thanks to the quick thinking and action of MasterGberry and Rigner, we were able to setup whitelisted arena servers to prevent the lag problems. We made the decision to void the round affected by lag as it had a very noticeable impact on the match and we felt it would be unfair to count it. While this created a lot of chaos and an unfortunate delay in the finals, it was dealt with as fast as possible. In the future, we will develop better solutions to problems caused by large number of spectators. We are looking into the possibility of selling a limited number of "tickets" to spec tournaments.


Other than these issues, this tournament ran well on a number of fronts. HUGE THANKS to Huahwi for streaming the whole thing, it's awesome to have partners who are able to be involved in our tournaments in more ways than just playing. After all, most major eSports have casters commentating the events, and it's important for us to have a way to market to people who are less familiar with Badlion.

For the first time in awhile, I decided to try to develop a seeding system for this tournament. Out of 30 signups, we had 16 no shows. However, nearly every no-show was in the first round, leaving the rest of the tournament to be competitive matches. The seeding system also correctly predicted 75% of the quarterfinal and semifinal matchups, and predicted the finals correctly. We had an exciting 3-2 finals between two very strong teams. This was all a benefit of seeding the teams based on arena MMR. If you didn’t see, this was my seeding system. As a huge advocate for transparent and thorough seeding methods, I’m very excited that it worked as well as it did, and I plan to continue using similar systems for future tourneys! Seeding also helped me get top bracket. ;-)

Thank you to all the tournament staff who helped most of the matches run smoothly, and who worked well under pressure when they didn’t. Shoutout to UVPickles for doing a tremendous amount of work entering in teams for our roster doc and to zicuri for helping input MMR ratings for the seeding doc. Most of all, thanks to all of you for continuing to sign up and compete in our tournaments, they wouldn’t be possible without the community!

Prizes:

[HelloEveryoneMyNameIsKarliXon - 1st - $650]
KarliXon
JOYFUL
Charqed
Radioactivebeans
noeggs
EdoTricksPro
Kikzo

[PrayForWin Emerald - 2nd - $250]
Bestaquiio
Restump
Luministe
ItsSheepman_
TheVicMC
KidiZoom
iSkinZ

[Leftnut - 3rd - $100]
reesbspecsme
Arsalad
Mxcrxpxlx
Deathseal
Gingeg0d
Blurrs
Getoutmekar

The above teams will be contacted regarding their prize money soon.
You can find the full results here (remember the team listed as 3rd is now DQed): http://badlion.challonge.com/euarena5v5

We hope to see you all again at the 1v1 Soup tournament next Saturday, August 12th.

Posted on 06 August 2017 - 12:25 AM

A couple questions for you guys to discuss:

Today we kept the gamemode order secret and chose it randomly so teams would be forced to play well-rounded players instead of people who were just good at pot, bow, etc. Do you guys think this was reasonable?

We decided to make the finals Bo5 which meant one gamemode was randomly chosen to be played just once. There were some complaints that this led to randomness playing a factor in the finals. How could we do this sort of format better in the future?

Posted on 06 August 2017 - 12:29 AM

#HelloEveryoneMyNameIsKarliXon

Posted on 06 August 2017 - 12:34 AM

I think the random kits were a really good addition b/c it forced the teams to make risks with their rosters. If PFW Emerald knew it was going to be archer last round then they would've put KidiZoom but they didn't want to risk him getting put into NoDebuff so it forced them to play smart with a more globally-rounded team.

I also feel that it was not that clear that the finals were going to be bo5's so teams were kinda scurred. Also i have the mention that the redo was the dumbest thing ever b/c PFW was literally only complaining that they are getting closer to a loss so they blamed lag even thought Karlixon's team could've easily blamed the first pot match on lag b/c that match was clearly equal if not greater in lag. Either way, one of the best tournaments Badlion has hosted in a while with an intense af Finals.

Posted on 06 August 2017 - 01:11 AM

Haha my boy Joyful making bang 💰

Posted on 06 August 2017 - 02:41 AM

I told you this in voice but I think it's worth other people's' time to think about it:

As an overarching statement, I'm just going to put it out there that RNG always lowers skillcaps. It's pretty straightforward; If you are not given the opportunity to make decisions you will invariably (haha) not get rewarded for making the correct or the incorrect plays - Compare something like Chess (0% variance, every decision is made by the player) to Hearthstone (45% variance, slightly less than half the outcomes, excluding a players' ability to play around RNG, are decided by RNG) to Poker (55% variance, mostly RNG).

So with that in mind, I think it that it was definitely not in the best interest of Badlion competitively to predetermine / have staff determine randomly on the spot the gamemodes' play order; teams should be vetoing the orders of the gamemodes.

Regardless, I don't think there's any reason to *not* have gamemode vetoes. It takes slightly more time, sure, but it's a quite straightforward process. Picking what gamemode to play first or second isn't exactly a difficult thing for new players, if anything logging into Badlion client was the most confusing thing about the tournament.

The biggest impact random gamemode order had was on the teams' rosters - They couldnt play the players that would perform best in a situation because they didn't know what the situation would be. It made the tournament less competitive and didn't use the concept of a 7-player team to its fullest potential.

1. It seems like in badlion staffs' eyes, the 2 subs are just extra players to play when something goes wrong with one of the 'main' players, but realistically that's not the function smart teams will use those slots for.
If I have a team of 5 players that's pretty well rounded and can guarantee being able to attend a 1 day, 5-6 hour tournament, I'm not going to spend my other two slots on other well rounded players. I'm going to get players who are specifically good at certain gamemodes who will increase my chances. Instead of the guys who are about 80/100 in both Archer and NoDebuff, I'm going to get the guy who are 95/100 in Archer and 20/100 in NoDebuff and vice versa.
It's the equivalent of getting melee heavy players for certain CTF/CTW maps and bow heavy players for others.
You want players who are better in niche situations because they will give you a certain edge if you play your cards right - Veto the right map, set up the right gamemode, etc.

Being able to plan for and execute all of that requires forethought, gamemode knowledge, map knowledge (in the case of CTF and CTW), and coordination on top of just pvp ability, there is a far higher skillcap. But because the gamemodes are randomized teams cannot do any of that, and like the guy said in the very first reply to this thread, can't risk playing more skilled players in certain gamemodes because of the *unknown* risk of running into unfavourable situations.

I think the fact that Ny's seeding based on MMR ratings was basically perfect is not a good thing. It shows that 5v5 doesn't require more anything than 1v1s, and that undermines the whole concept of playing the gamemode with more than 1 player. I actually don't understand why there's even support or time invested into something that is equally linear if just not more time consuming on a competitive level.

Tl;dr:

Random gamemode picking is far less competitive than allowing for teams to veto
5v5 Arena hasnt evolved at all and is a waste of time

Posted on 06 August 2017 - 03:59 AM

Congratulations to all the winners :)

Posted on 06 August 2017 - 04:47 AM

As the leader of keronii's team, apologies to all players that could have been impacted by his "hacks" during the tournament or before. Since we didn't even play on the Badlion Client because it wasn't working properly, I'm wondering what exactly are the "logs" saying and when it happened.

By the way, playing a Bo5 final randomly when there are only 3 kits was the less-competitive thing in the tournament history. The last match was completely luck-based, and out of 5 matches PFW Emerald only played NoDebuff, which was their best gamemode, once.

Congratulations to the winners and nice job for the seeding!

Last edited on 06 August 2017 - 04:52 AM by KarliXon

I think that getting a well rounded team is a MUST for a random tournament, this makes players try harder and not just think oh we have this dude who will carry in archer and this dude who will carry in nodebuff(estimate is original 5 is build roster), I think that randomness of the kits was a great idea and should be used in future 5v5 tournaments(obviously thanks to @Blaszczak forming this team, we were probably the most rounded GLOBAL team here, and didn't encounter any major problems), on the other hand PFW had their best archer player kidizoom who isnt good at melee and we probably won the last match because they didnt want to risk a nodebuff match with kidizoom so they put in someone else, ultimately leading to us winning - its not just randomness, its the leader/player's decision to put someone in to play, I really liked the randomness of this tournament and would like to see it more

also, a better finals would maybe be a best of 3 in each of those kits but still randomised so all kits are played atleast 2 times(randomised so players can't just put in good archer/nodebuff players in)

Posted on 06 August 2017 - 09:20 AM

First of all, I found the announcement post really unclear on a lot of things that turned out being important features.
For example, the fact that teams weren't informed of the kits before the matches was something we really didn't expect as it was a brand new system in tournaments, so better explaining it would have been a good thing since it hugely impacts the rosters, because rounded players were highly required to play it in the best way.

Concerning the random order in itself, I don't find it proper for a tournament, it's too much luck based, especially if we can't adapt the rosters. I think a good way to improve this would be to implement a "veto system", just like in lechampionkev's tournaments. The concept is simple, at the beginning of the round, each team chooses a kit they don't want to play, and the kit that hasn't been picked will be the one in the first match. Then, the losing team decides the second kit to be played, and if there is a draw, the last kit will be the third one.
With this system, a team can't lose without playing their favorite kit and a team can't win only thanks to their best kit.

Regarding the amount of matches per round, a bo3 for each kit is required to make it fair and skill based, especially in a 5v5 tournament where mistakes are easily made. Regarding the finale (and semi-finales imo), instead of implementing a random factor that leads to a kit being less played, simply playing a bo5 in each kit could be sufficient.

Finally I was pleasantly surprised to see that you finally adopted a seeding system. Without a well-balanced challonge, the tournament can quickly turn out really unfair because the best teams might me in the same quarter, leading average teams to places they probably wouldn't have gotten if they had faced at least one good team, just like in the archer tournament.

Last edited on 06 August 2017 - 10:05 AM by Charqed

The randomness was a great idea and it forced teams to have a more balanced team rather than just gods of that one particular kit, it made it a gamble and much more entertaining / exiting in my opinion. In the last fight of the finals it could have been either NoDebuff or Archer, Kidizoom was risky to play as it could have been NoDebuff however he is essential in Archer. This ended up with the teams consisting of more well rounded players as putting in anyone who specialised in one kit would have been extremely risky.

Posted on 06 August 2017 - 11:03 AM

Will all the teams that were no shows be DQ'd from future Tourneys like SuchSpeed, xNestorio, Rex, and jd even though they are famous??

Posted on 06 August 2017 - 12:40 PM

Was an honor to work with all of you to create an elite group that's phenomenal at everything.

Posted on 06 August 2017 - 01:11 PM

exactly what he said

Posted on 06 August 2017 - 03:06 PM

Compared to the rest of the tournaments badlion in my opinion this was the one that was ran the smoothest.
Random kits did add a very interesting factor into the tournament however it also added a lot of RNG to it which is not good for a competitive tournament. The results would have been a lot different if it the kits were not random, especially in the finals. A team should not win because they luckily put in the right rosters. With 7 people it just turns into a guessing game. The final round PFW was decently confident with their bow roster and didn't want to risk kidizoom in no debuff. If it was no debuff we probably would have lost, if they put in kidizoom we could have lost. Guessing shouldn't be this important. Veto system would be a lot better
I was watching Huahwi's stream during the tournament, it just seemed very forced and as if he didn't want to be there. In my opinion it would be a better choice if it was someone with a smaller youtube channel and was familiar with the community. Jdegoederen would have been a great choice (all of this assuming you guys asked huahwi to promote it)
Avalanche not showing was unfortunate it would have been great promotion.
I don't want to sound rude but BLC was a bit of a failure but nothing unfixable. Normally tournament was supposed to be a week earlier and you guys postponed it to finalize the client. You guys should have announced it a lot earlier if you thought it wasn't going to be perfect and not right before it after everyone practiced on it. I congratulate BLC for catching keronii, he has been cheating for a really long time and hasn't been banned. Kind of sad how he was able to get top 2 without getting caught tho.
The restarts were very unnecessary. The lag wasn't a game changer and it lagged every single round even in the redo. If we lost the redo I would have been very mad.
Very nice seeding nothing to say
Overall great tournament hope to participate in other ones, congratz to PFW Emerald for coming second.

Posted on 06 August 2017 - 05:24 PM

Randomness was what I hated the most this tournament. I can't think of any esports that don't have players that specialize in a certain position.

Posted on 06 August 2017 - 07:14 PM

I mean this tournament was specialized on the versatility aspect, which can also be seen as a skill for itself (definitely more skill based anyways), just like being specialized in a specific position

Last edited on 06 August 2017 - 08:00 PM by Kiivo

This ^^^^
1) Arena 5v5 just isn't competitive enough and for competitive minecraft to develop, the likes of Arena tournaments should be replaced by objective gamemodes such as CTF and CTW
As a server I think more effort should go into promoting the likes of CTF and CTW and this could be done by hosting more of these tournaments, and making Arena more of a 1v1 scene on its own rather than 5v5 if anything

2) My issue wasnt really the fact that the randomness made it less competitive, but the fact that teams werent informed that this is how it was going to be done

3) Another annoyance my team "Flurry" had was that we essentially got moved up to 4th place due to the fact that PFW Ruby were DQed
It may have been because the tournament had already finished, but I believe we should have been able to play the Bronze match game and had the chance to come 3rd.
Its not a massive issue but in a way we lost the chance to win money because another team was cheating, which is kinda stupid and annoying

edit: Actually we should have been allowed to play PFW Emerald in the semi-finals

Posted on 06 August 2017 - 08:14 PM

pretty sure danteh would agree for all you badlion sweats xd

Posted on 06 August 2017 - 08:44 PM

I am Danteh