I love the idea of the site-wide tournaments, but in practice I’ve noticed they rarely produce competitive challenges.
People tend to join tournaments early when they see other similarly ranked players on the list. When each player believes he or she holds a legitimate chance of winning, it creates interesting and exciting games where every move counts.
However, much stronger players always seem to sign up during the last few seconds of a countdown. While still fun, I believe this ruins the competitive atmosphere and makes tournaments less interesting. In fairness, I know from talking to low kyus and dans that they don’t like to join tournaments early, because then others will drop out or avoid signing up.
Could this perhaps be fixed by restricting rank on at least some of the main tournaments? I know these exist separately in the tournament tab, but they are less frequent than the daily countdowns and often attract less people.
As an example, the countdown would show different tournaments to 11k-20ks, 1k-10ks, and 1d+ (or even go by increments of 5 if there is enough demand).
Handicap tournaments also work much better when rank differences between the players are relatively small. Huge handicaps are not very well balanced and many players do not enjoy the kind of game they lead to.
I am not sure to understand that part, could you please elaborate?
I don’t like the idea of using ranks as a main criterion, simply because this is not reliable. You’ll always have new or underrated players that can join and crush you.
I find that multi-round McMahon is a good way to get competitive games, with the first round allowing for adjustments of the underrated players.
I think tournaments are competitive when all (or most) players believe they have a legitimate chance of winning - or at least advancing to later rounds. When this is the case, all players are invested in their games, and each win or loss feels especially meaningful.
As a 10k, I once beat an 8k on a good day, and I’ve lost to 13ks while feeling a bit tired. While still an underdog, I would feel like I stood a chance if placed in a tournament with an 8 or 9k. However, if a 1d drops into the tournament last minute, the result is essentially predetermined so I no longer feel invested in the games.
Of course, it’s sometimes fun to play in tournaments against stronger players for fun or to learn, but it would be nice to have more opportunities to play similarly skilled players in a tournament setting.
Also, I believe ranking tends to be fairly reliable online from a statistical standpoint.
Of course, the occasional sandbagger or new player could cause problems, but since tournaments are ranked it would be difficult to abuse for long periods of time in order to collect trophies or dominate weaker players.