10th Official FFR Tournament

[_DJ Vinyl_]

Well another good file I'm surprised it looks easy, but this is probably all I could AAA to so i will try my best because I want to get vertex vrofl

[ShurykaN]

I think Masquerade of Shadow brought up a really great point about the format of the tournament. It's really like seven different tournaments where people are placed arbitrarily based upon their level ranks. Do some people possibly belong in different divisions? Maybe. It's also unclear as to how exactly people get assigned to where they are, but this needs to be in place so people don't sandbag or try to cheat the system to get into a division they don't belong to. I think the tournament organizers did a spectacular job placing people in the correct divisions, but there are still problems that arise.

I would be willing to bet credits that the people who get top 8 of their divisions are also the same 8 people who were the best at the start of the tournament. It's great to say that the person who worked the hardest or improved the most is doing the best, but this is more of a fantasy than what actually happens. It takes more than 8 weeks to go from being able to AAA 50s to being able to AAA 70s. On the other hand Masquerade of Shadow, keep in mind that you are playing against other people, and the cutoff for this round may not be as high as you expect! In my opinion the d4 song this week is quite difficult and I expect the cutoff to be around 20g or higher.

However, this bring another point. Every (or almost every) person in a higher division would be able to crush through any division lower than theirs! How is it fair that people worse than them get rewarded more? Every one of them has put in more effort and has more skill to get to where they are today. Everything other than d7 isn't at a truly competitive level. The reason for having divisions in the first place is to allow lower skilled players to still participate and for their efforts to be recognized.

So how do we fix these problems? Like Masquerade of Shadow or other people have suggested, the amount of divisions could be increased (possibly even doubled!) so as to account for more skill levels. This does run into a variety of problems such as not being able to produce enough simfiles and doesn't fix the original problem of people at the higher and lower ends of the division having an easier time or being shafted. Another solution that has been suggested is having divisions play the same file, so as to not flood the game with hard songs and still allow the distinction between skill levels. Personally I don't like this because it makes each division unique to have their own song and it brings more content into the game. I don't think the game is being flooded with hard files, and even if it is the amount of hard files shouldn't affect newer players because they should only play files at their level anyway. I enjoy the super hard files even if I don't have a chance of getting less than 300 goods on them.

Perhaps next tournament you could abolish the idea of placing people into divisions altogether and make it so people can play all 7 songs and work to place themselves into the different divisions. Like the top 32 scores on the hardest song would get d7, and if you are not top 32 there if your score is top 64 for the d6 song you get d6. This would make sandbagging even easier to do and is just a suggestion for a possible different format.

Anyway, TC_Halogen I am really enjoying this tournament and everything you've put into it, thank you for making this possible and all your hard work! Honesty I wouldn't mind if you didn't have preview videos, or at least every round; now that they are an established thing they bring about more qq than hype it seems.

Thank you Masquerade of Shadow for this thought provoking discussion instead of merely whining about how hard and unfair this game is.

[hi19hi19]

I think everyone should have their own division that way we can all be winners.

[lurker]

how about next time, we have no divisions
stop fucking whining
this discussion isn't new or engaging
nobody wants to read this shit

[Lambdadelta]

Seems like a great time to bring back one division elimination tournaments!

[Poison-]

We seriously should try out a single division tournament again.

[hi19hi19]

i heard there might be a user-run tournament of that style in the future...

[TC_Halogen]

Thanks for the post, ShurykaN; I would agree that there's a fair number of points that could be brought with what MoS said -- it's the way that he said it that made others (and myself) perceive that it was more of a complaint than a suggestion. Your post is a bit more thought-provoking.

Originally Posted by ShurykaN

I would be willing to bet credits that the people who get top 8 of their divisions are also the same 8 people who were the best at the start of the tournament. It's great to say that the person who worked the hardest or improved the most is doing the best, but this is more of a fantasy than what actually happens. It takes more than 8 weeks to go from being able to AAA 50s to being able to AAA 70s. On the other hand Masquerade of Shadow, keep in mind that you are playing against other people, and the cutoff for this round may not be as high as you expect! In my opinion the d4 song this week is quite difficult and I expect the cutoff to be around 20g or higher.

- There were a few people who were in a reasonably advantageous situation compared to others (ironically enough, you were one of them, haha). However, previous tournaments have shown that those who given the largest effort typically are the ones that improve the fastest. My favorite example to bring up is the KrazyKitsune/Skeelie battle in the final round on a level 61 file, where they both got teens on file -- what's even crazier is that both players were not front runners, because they both actually traded AAAs through the first 4 rounds. At the start of tournament, they were pretty solid (arguably low) D1 players, but at the end, they were at least D3. Improvement can help quite a bit, but it is admittedly difficult to see beyond the scope of level ranks and occasional FFR score posts.

Originally Posted by ShurykaN

However, this bring another point. Every (or almost every) person in a higher division would be able to crush through any division lower than theirs! How is it fair that people worse than them get rewarded more? Every one of them has put in more effort and has more skill to get to where they are today. Everything other than d7 isn't at a truly competitive level. The reason for having divisions in the first place is to allow lower skilled players to still participate and for their efforts to be recognized.

- This part of the post leaves a lot to be discussed. Yes, I do agree in rewarding the higher level players more than lower level players, and I mean it in a very fair, not elitist way; in other games, there is no structure of levels or tiers in the level of tournament players. There's usually a bracket filled with players (if large, split up into two/four), and a qualifier system that allows players to be seeded appropriately. As a look into the future after the official, I am looking to host a user tournament that is going to attempt to address this system, but it will require some high activity by all players early on to develop reasonably accurate seeds.

- While I don't agree with the divisional system, I will say that it does allow for several strings of competition at once; you are right in the fact that it is like playing seven different tournaments as once, because everyone gets unique songs for a given round, and everyone is grouped together as reasonably close as possible to their skill. This doesn't mean that every division other than D7 is non-competitive; in fact, the competition has been pretty stiff in D5 and D6 as well, and I foresee some interesting developments in D2 this round. You can have competition at a lower level (think of baseball, the major leagues versus the minor leagues), and it isn't fair to discredit those.

Originally Posted by ShurykaN

So how do we fix these problems? Like Masquerade of Shadow or other people have suggested, the amount of divisions could be increased (possibly even doubled!) so as to account for more skill levels. This does run into a variety of problems such as not being able to produce enough simfiles and doesn't fix the original problem of people at the higher and lower ends of the division having an easier time or being shafted. Another solution that has been suggested is having divisions play the same file, so as to not flood the game with hard songs and still allow the distinction between skill levels. Personally I don't like this because it makes each division unique to have their own song and it brings more content into the game. I don't think the game is being flooded with hard files, and even if it is the amount of hard files shouldn't affect newer players because they should only play files at their level anyway. I enjoy the super hard files even if I don't have a chance of getting less than 300 goods on them.

- Adding divisions does not help the situation, unfortunately. All it does is continually add arbitrary separation in divisions in such a way where more and more people will believe they will fall in x area, despite being placed in x+1 of a system that has double of our divisions. The tournament concept on FFR is largely flawed and will continue to be the way that it stands now because of three things: a.) skill can't be determined easily and heavily relies on honesty, which as seen earlier in the tournament, some people don't care about; b.) rounds are a week long and really don't measure active skill but rather resilience/mental endurance to keep playing a song over and over again; c.) rounds are not live. The last element is what makes tournaments very special typically -- you might be very well trained, and hell, maybe you are at the "professional" level of FFR, but you are human, and humans make error. You don't get to see that error as much as you should, because you can continue to play your song over and over again - as an idea: I am a big fan of an X-Games style structure where you get a specific number of "heats" and ONLY have that allottment to get a score (in order to do this on FFR, it would need to be live, or at least supervised).

- Having divisions playing the same file doesn't work easily considering the skill ceiling of players. If you make a file at a certain difficulty, it will be too hard for one group, and too easy for others. The only way to rectify this situation is to have multiple files, which does absolutely nothing to solve the file flooding issue. FFR runs the risk of having frustrated players when the level ranks get flooded with extremely high level files, and this already happens to some extent with each official tournament (as mentioned, 2 out of every 3 files is at least level 66 or higher).

Originally Posted by ShurykaN

Perhaps next tournament you could abolish the idea of placing people into divisions altogether and make it so people can play all 7 songs and work to place themselves into the different divisions. Like the top 32 scores on the hardest song would get d7, and if you are not top 32 there if your score is top 64 for the d6 song you get d6. This would make sandbagging even easier to do and is just a suggestion for a possible different format.

- In order for a scale like this to work, you need to dynamically add songs based off of seeding. I have an idea on how this would be done and planned on testing it with the user tournament mentioned a bit further up in this post, but again, the seeding might not be the most reliable because it will rely on users being available for a reasonable amount of time in the qualification period/round songs.

Originally Posted by ShurykaN

Anyway, TC_Halogen I am really enjoying this tournament and everything you've put into it, thank you for making this possible and all your hard work! Honesty I wouldn't mind if you didn't have preview videos, or at least every round; now that they are an established thing they bring about more qq than hype it seems.

- I like to see people's reactions to their files a bit early, and I know that others enjoy the preview videos as well, so I will most certainly not stop putting out the videos every round.

[PhantomPuppy]

Originally Posted by ShurykaN

I would be willing to bet credits that the people who get top 8 of their divisions are also the same 8 people who were the best at the start of the tournament.

well, idk if imma make top 8, but at the start of the tourney i was technically under-qualified for D3. Halogen let me move up, but my best AAA going in was sitting at a 29. Most D2's can easily do that. My best AAA is still not a 50, but I can say that this tourney has definitely gotten me to improve a lot. of course, there has been a lot of extra work in every round that I've had to put into getting on par scores with other D3's. going into the tourney, I don't really think anybody thought I was going to get very far (correct me if I'm wrong). I do feel that it is very possible for a person to improve a lot throughout the tourney, there are definitely other people to back me up on that.

[TheSaxRunner05]

Originally Posted by ShurykaN

I think Masquerade of Shadow brought up a really great point about the format of the tournament. It's really like seven different tournaments where people are placed arbitrarily based upon their level ranks. Do some people possibly belong in different divisions? Maybe. It's also unclear as to how exactly people get assigned to where they are, but this needs to be in place so people don't sandbag or try to cheat the system to get into a division they don't belong to. I think the tournament organizers did a spectacular job placing people in the correct divisions, but there are still problems that arise.

I would be willing to bet credits that the people who get top 8 of their divisions are also the same 8 people who were the best at the start of the tournament. It's great to say that the person who worked the hardest or improved the most is doing the best, but this is more of a fantasy than what actually happens. It takes more than 8 weeks to go from being able to AAA 50s to being able to AAA 70s. On the other hand Masquerade of Shadow, keep in mind that you are playing against other people, and the cutoff for this round may not be as high as you expect! In my opinion the d4 song this week is quite difficult and I expect the cutoff to be around 20g or higher.

However, this bring another point. Every (or almost every) person in a higher division would be able to crush through any division lower than theirs! How is it fair that people worse than them get rewarded more? Every one of them has put in more effort and has more skill to get to where they are today. Everything other than d7 isn't at a truly competitive level. The reason for having divisions in the first place is to allow lower skilled players to still participate and for their efforts to be recognized.

So how do we fix these problems? Like Masquerade of Shadow or other people have suggested, the amount of divisions could be increased (possibly even doubled!) so as to account for more skill levels. This does run into a variety of problems such as not being able to produce enough simfiles and doesn't fix the original problem of people at the higher and lower ends of the division having an easier time or being shafted. Another solution that has been suggested is having divisions play the same file, so as to not flood the game with hard songs and still allow the distinction between skill levels. Personally I don't like this because it makes each division unique to have their own song and it brings more content into the game. I don't think the game is being flooded with hard files, and even if it is the amount of hard files shouldn't affect newer players because they should only play files at their level anyway. I enjoy the super hard files even if I don't have a chance of getting less than 300 goods on them.

Perhaps next tournament you could abolish the idea of placing people into divisions altogether and make it so people can play all 7 songs and work to place themselves into the different divisions. Like the top 32 scores on the hardest song would get d7, and if you are not top 32 there if your score is top 64 for the d6 song you get d6. This would make sandbagging even easier to do and is just a suggestion for a possible different format.

Anyway, TC_Halogen I am really enjoying this tournament and everything you've put into it, thank you for making this possible and all your hard work! Honesty I wouldn't mind if you didn't have preview videos, or at least every round; now that they are an established thing they bring about more qq than hype it seems.

Thank you Masquerade of Shadow for this thought provoking discussion instead of merely whining about how hard and unfair this game is.

Sorry, but I am going to have to disagree with almost everything you have said.

@Paragraph 1: Placements are NOT arbitrary, they are made by a team of experienced players using metrics previously predicated ranged. Just because there is a little subjectiveness on division borders does not make it arbitrary.

In terms of sandbagging, most of the time I think people really have improved. However, the system is not perfect. I will say this: the current tournament set up favors people who have only played casually before and don't have level ranks as diverse and practiced as someone who has played for years. It's hard to judge player's skills who have never really pushed their limits before. In the end, however, it really all comes down to improvement though. Hard work and practice can make anyone skill boost, but it takes time and dedication.

@Paragraph 2: History has shown this is rarely the case, actually. Usually, the player who has skillboosted the most wins. Also, "It takes more than 8 weeks to go from being able to AAA 50s to being able to AAA 70s" - I've seen it happen before, but rarely. 1/6 of a Year is a loooong time to improve.

@Paragraph 3: I take issue with " Everything other than d7 isn't at a truly competitive level" when I see cutthroat competition in every division right now. Also, would you find it fun to be playing D7 songs and getting 200-500g's every play? Divisions keep players from getting bored by too few, or too many notes. D1's playing an 80+ would come down to just mashing. Plus, there would be no incentive for D1,2,3,4,5, or even 6 players to join if they had no chance at prizes. And what better to reward than improvement?

@Paragraph 4: Adding divisions would only make placement, and therefore sandbagging, more of an issue. Plus, 7 new songs a week is a shit-ton of new content; we prefer quality of quantity. Also, if all divisions played the same file, you would have 6/7ths of the player base bored from it either being too hard and mashing or too easy and sightreading the AAA. Also, players don't always just play files at their level, some play above their level all the time to get better. When I was D1, I loved just trying to pass FGO's for fun, and to watch their 'epicness.' Even now that I can read them, but not hit them well, it's still fun to see how much I can shave of old mashed scores.

@Paragraph 5: A placement round for the official would just result in more sandbagging (play songs to determine division). Many people wouldn't put as much effort into the placement song, especially without the threat of elimination.


Also, I have run a divisionless tournament before that worked out alright. D1 and D6 took several rounds to get to where they were playing appropriate files for them, however.

Maybe the dashboard would keep recording your scores in an eliminated bracket to see where you would place each round? That could be a cool way of keeping more players active even if there wasn't prizes or even just a credit prize each week for some sort of losers bracket (either 17th and lower or amoung everyone who had been thus far eliminated) would be interesting.

[VisD]

lmfao i was wondering when we'd reach this point in the tournament

Originally Posted by hi19hi19

I WAS PLACED TOO HIGH
MY COMPETITION WAS PLACED TOO LOW
ALL THE SONGS SUCK
ALL THE FILES SUCK
THE PREVIEW VIDEOS ARE LATE
EVERYONE ELSE IS SANDBAGGING

[Silvuh]

Originally Posted by ShurykaN

I think Masquerade of Shadow brought up a really great point about the format of the tournament. It's really like seven different tournaments where people are placed arbitrarily based upon their level ranks. Do some people possibly belong in different divisions? Maybe. It's also unclear as to how exactly people get assigned to where they are, but this needs to be in place so people don't sandbag or try to cheat the system to get into a division they don't belong to. I think the tournament organizers did a spectacular job placing people in the correct divisions, but there are still problems that arise.

More precise transparency would be nice, but the absence of it doesn't make it arbitrary. The placements are mostly based on the difficulty of your best AAA, BF, SDG, and further levels of goods. It is explained in the FAQ here. Level ranks are more closely inspected when these stats aren't decisive enough.

I would be willing to bet credits that the people who get top 8 of their divisions are also the same 8 people who were the best at the start of the tournament. It's great to say that the person who worked the hardest or improved the most is doing the best, but this is more of a fantasy than what actually happens.

Check out the ALL page on the Zenith Table Spreadsheet. The level ranks from everyone in the tournament were analyzed (not related to how placement is actually done) during the second week. The equations are definitely not infallible or anything, but it's neat to look at. I've been coloring users by the round they've been eliminated in (and if they completely played the file in that round). You can see how some people whose scores were not the best around the beginning of the tourney are still in the game, but you can also see that many of the top-of-the-pack players are still in. So both sides still stand, really.

It will be interesting to run this analysis again on everyone after the tournament to see how the standings change.

However, this bring another point. Every (or almost every) person in a higher division would be able to crush through any division lower than theirs! How is it fair that people worse than them get rewarded more? Every one of them has put in more effort and has more skill to get to where they are today. Everything other than d7 isn't at a truly competitive level. The reason for having divisions in the first place is to allow lower skilled players to still participate and for their efforts to be recognized.

For the first point, that's not necessarily the case. I know that, being in D5, the final rounds in D4 do get too hard for me, and ... well, I never actually shadowed a lower division before, so I didn't keep track if I could beat D4's scores. But there are some users who do shadowing here who could give their take on that whole thing.

But yeah, you answer your own question here in the rest of that paragraph. And I agree, people with less skill—because the scale is so huge—shouldn't be left out from being rewarded. And you do the same in your next two paragraphs, bringing up the points and then refuting them with your opinion. And I pretty much agree with all of that—that it will be too difficult to gather the content to run too many divisions ... (Look at the Histogram page of the Zenith Table Spreadsheet, and you can see how wide the different divisions are. Between D1 and D2 seems like the most needed place for an extra division) ... and that no matter how many divisions there are, there will always be those on top and those on bottom, and that if everyone placed a "placer" file that's just asking for sandbagging ...

"Everyone playing the same file" was only suggested for D7 and D6 I think, and only up to a point. And whether you agree with that depends on what you think about the number of hard files in the game, yeah. (That's the one thing I disagree with you here on, I don't enjoy playing files that I get over 300 goods on. Check out the Input Hypothesis. You don't learn when you stay in your comfort zone, but you can't go too far out. Me trying to play 90+s is like being a first-semester language student in a third-year class.)

Anyway, it's always nice to see some calmly thought-out posts in here~

[hi19hi19]

The thing that amuses me is always that the people who are complaining are the people who wouldn't even have the slightest chance to win anything, at all, ever, in any other tournament format.

Think about it, if you're D4 right now, in any other style of tournament you'd have already lost a long time ago. We currently should have 128 people left in the tournament; if you are in D4 you are very likely not top 128 (D5-D7 is 144 people) so you're eliminated already. Bye.
Be grateful that the division system exists at all so that there's at least the chance for competition among some members of the community that are not the top of D7.



As an experiment, go ahead and play all the D7 files in order, which are the ones you and everyone else would eventually have to play if this was a "fair tournament."
You have to AAA the first four - Pandemonium, Shippuujinrai, Double Helix, and MANIERA - to make it to a prize round. Good luck.
Let me know when you start to realize that you wouldn't stand a chance of winning anything, or even enjoying any sense of competition at all, without a division system.

EDIT- If you want another experiment, go ask AJ how much work it would be to add 7 more divisions...
Pray he's in a good mood.

[Lambdadelta]

The cornman speaks truth

[Staiain]

quit bitching, i agree that people who complain too much should be placed in a division higher

[Telnaior]

On a more on-topic note, I am far too good at mindblocking myself. But D1's far too close this time to accept anything less D:

[ItsOnlyDanO]

bf or die already in d6?
damn

[Funnygurl555]

hehu

[Poison-]

Originally Posted by Funnygurl555

hehu

u suck

[Funnygurl555]

Originally Posted by Poison-

u suck