Proposed changes to tournament scoring and matchmaking

[PaganCyC]

We know the organizers are discussing changes to the scoring, but no announcements have been made yet. So now is the time for constructive suggestions. Here are mine, perhaps others will add theirs below.

PROBLEM: Inactive players
PROPOSED SOLUTIONS:
1) Require verification of intent to play before each round.
2) Have a 3 day start period after which any players who have not begun to play are removed from the round (or tournament) and their opponents are matched with others in the same situation.

PROBLEM: Insufficient information
I for one had no idea how the first round was scored at the beginning, or that winning early resulted in a lower score. I also had no idea that attempting to trade in the Polish armored train would just make it disappear with no prestige refund.
PROPOSED SOLUTION:
Provide a description for each scenario listing:

• Scoring details
• Prestige sources and amount per turn.
• Units that cannot be traded in for prestige

PROBLEM: Scoring system
Early round scoring is necessarily done without knowledge of relative skill levels, which leads to scores that do not reflect relative skill levels. For example, a top tier player paired against an unskilled player will have a much higher score than either of two top tier players who play one another in the first round. Also, someone with a bye or whose opponent does not show up receives an arbitrary 2000 points which has nothing to do with skill.
PROPOSED SOLUTIONS:
1) Weight the scores for each round, with earlier rounds counting for less and later rounds more.
2) Instead of byes, have make-up matches for those who miss out on a round. Make-up rounds can run concurrently with the main rounds.

But most importantly, I want to thank Slitherine for running this tournament, which they are under no obligation to do. And I hope everyone can keep in mind that this is a game that we enjoy, and setbacks are only temporary and do not make the game less fun.

[PaganCyC]

A few more thoughts:

Instead of 2000 points for an opponent no-show, make the score the average of the player's scores from the rest of the rounds. That way their score for the missed round will be no better or worse than their skill level.

Ideally, each round's overall average score would be normalized so that rounds that are longer and/or have more victory hexes to not count more than rounds with shorter/fewer.

[Lifever]

Covered weighin the missed rounds viewtopic.php?p=941863#p941863

But after giving it more thought it is a suboptimal solution.

Easy exploit:

Somebody is #1 after 9 rounds with recent stellar results.
All he needs to do then: Lay low and let it weigh out...

His stellar performance of 9 rounds will then net him an overall win by exploit
Don't like that.

Applaud your initiative

[PaganCyC]

Covered weighin the missed rounds viewtopic.php?p=941863#p941863

But after giving it more thought it is a suboptimal solution.
...

The weighting doesn't need to continue scaling through the latter part of the tournament. After the first few rounds players should be comparatively ranked pretty fairly.

[PaganCyC]

Just to be clear, I do not expect all or any of my ideas to make it into this tournament, I am just brainstorming at this point. Another idea:

The last few rounds could switch to seeded bracket style or round-robin with players sorted into groups from top to bottom.
For example, using placement after 10 rounds, the eleventh round could be 1v4 and 2v3 (and 5v8, 6v7 and on down the rankings) and the final round the winners of 1v4 and 2v3 playing for 1st and 2nd place and the losers playing for 3rd and 4th (again, all the way down the rankings).

[Sirgr3x90]

Regarding Tournaments in my opinion we should consider the actual score system only like a secondary metric in case of tie breaker and take as first parameter for the leaderboard the victories players get in every game they play.
It is a simple and efficient way to get rid of all the problems related to points farming abuse, win/score trading, players that dont play etc.
Often most skilled players are those who win consistently not those who get more points, expecially when later in the tourney the strongest players face each other. This could even be improved by the introduction of a Buchholz system that makes the matchmaking more balanced and fair. In multiple rounds tournaments like the world tournament this would reward merit and not luck.
This could make the leaderboard more challenging and fun because people will not try hard that much trying to destroy every units on the field to maximize points (perhaps even in ways that should not be allowed) and the overall experience will be less frustrating/exploitable.
On the contrary, those who manage to achieve victory with the least number of resources spent and lost and with few turns used should be rewarded.

"True victory is victory over aggression, a victory that respects the humanity of the enemy thus rendering further conflict useless." Sun Tzu

my 2 cents