NA vs EU Showdown: The Preparation Begins

[silencbank]

The gauntlet has been thrown, will the challenge be answered? For weeks the prospect of this undertaking has been talked about, being whispered of in the darkest corners of the dampest taverns. But, there have been issues stopping this dream from becoming reality. The logistics are problematic. There would have to be an agreement on where the matches are played. We would have to procure enough game passes for everyone to join on whichever server the games would be on.

So we throw it to you the community. We need guest passes, a setup, and players that are interested. If you want us to have a big tournament let us know. If you want to make them group stages that works too. If you have ideas post them, if you wanna join up post that too. This tournament is only for the SCL community so only official members of the forum need apply. This is still a few weeks out more than likely, but we might as well get the ball rolling now. Just remember that this tournament is just for fun. Thanks to Lesh and Hammy for starting the EU/NA feud. After all, before them everyone already knew that NA was better. Now we get to prove it. Game on.

[Zabimaru]

Why not do a ProLeague format?

[evillesh]

Actually I don't care where the games will be played, since both sides will experience lags playing across the ocean. In case of "shitz, I blame the lagz", tournament rematch can be made after some time.
I'm voting for double group stages into single elimination - swiss-system tournament to determine top 8 of the region, then qualified players from both regions are mixed into new groups, and after winners of the groups are known, single elimination tournament system begins. The first group games will be held for players on their home server.
Well, that's what I think would be best, but I might be wrong, I have 0 experience in runing the tournaments. But I'm really looking into this.

[dejai]

I don't care what sort of swizz cheese tournament twisted double bracket European flavored tournament you run. You are no match for the soul crushing brutality of the warrior's ladder in which we battle against each other week in week out for the glory of first prize fully accountable for our own failures. We are battle ready and while you Europeans have been playing fistycuffs in the school yard the real players have been training with the warriors. BRING IT ON.


(p.s. We may know Koreans*)

[Hammy]

Why not do a ProLeague format?

I've thinking about this a lot and setting this up was a part of my plans anyways, so I'll definitely pitch in.

To me, even more fun than a proleague format: a winner's league format with a twist:

4 players from each team, each player gets two losses before getting eliminated.

Those four players could be selected by tournament for example, or by league format (or by following ladder score after a certain period). A single bracket tournament to select them would suck though, since you wouldn't get the highest skill amongst the top4.


Anyways, I've got one US and one EU guest pass I can dig out.

With this format, one 7h guest pass should be enough to play the 8-16 games as long as they aren't all 40mn TvTs, and therefor to run the whole event.


Major issues:
-the players from the "visiting" team will all have high ping
-the players from the "visiting" team will need to install an additional client, which is very annoying

[silencbank]

So what your suggesting Hammy is that the NA side and EU side have their own way of getting down to the top 4, be it a group stage or double elimination tournament, and then the final 4 from each server battle it out in another tournament? The reason why I personally want group stages is the same reason you don't want single elimination: with more chances to play the better people will win. I would think it a shame that the best people lose a game to some random cheese tactic and be out completely, just wont sit well because if this is to be "the best of the best" we need to give the best players more chances to recover from bad loses.

Your idea reminds me of something akin to the Ryder Cup. People earn their spot to represent their server and we can go from there. Im not sure I understand what you mean about the "2 losses and they are out" thing in your setup. Perhaps I am just not seeing it, but I do not see why in 4v4 bracket system the 2 losses would work, unless you mean something like a losers bracket.

There really is nothing that can be done about the latency issues though. For this to work, people will have to accept the fact that they may very well lag. Seeing as how the only thing that is at stack here is forum bragging rights, I doubt many people will be hugely upset if they lose because of lag in tournament that has nothing at stake.

All these things are still being planned, and any ideas are welcome. This one is for us the community, so let us make it as good as we damn well can.

[JackhammerIV]

Maybe by 2 losses he means that each server has 4 players who play one on one against the 4 players on the other server. If anyone loses twice they get eliminated. This could work one of two ways:
1. Each player plays another player once and then if he loses to two diff players he is eliminated.
2. (I think he meant for something like this) With a total of 8 representatives they do a semifinal style pairing players from diff servers then best of 3 games (meaning 2 losses and you lose the semifinal)

I don't think this showdown would be a team on team matchup. Although team on team would be fun. Maybe two brackets?? 1v1 and 2v2.....then a 4v4 done for fun as a "friendly".:P And the rules of the 4v4 friendly will be races have to be: Terran, Protoss, Zerg, Random.:P Then no early rushes allowed. Like no attacking until 10 game mins in or something. Easier to keep track of with the in game clock.:P Make it a crazy huge high tier army battle. Battlecruisers, carriers, ultralisks, thors, void rays, vikings, brood lords, nukes, nydus, mothership. Crazy crazy battle where everyone's food goes from 200/200 to like 100/200.

[Hammy]

I think heavy laddering might be the easiest way to figure out who should represent his ladder.

Regarding the format itself, yeah I wasn't clear, and my idea might sound a bit weird but it's something I wouldn't mind seeing. I'll illustrate:

Team Europe:
EU1, EU2, EU3, EU4.
Team North America:
NA1, NA2, NA3, NA4.

>Each team decides who they're opening with:
>Team EU sends EU1, Team NA sends NA2

>NA2(protoss) > EU1(terran)

-Team EU can now either send EU1 back for another round against NA2, or send in another player and keep EU1's second life for later. If EU1 is a TvT monster, but sucks at TvP, it kinda sucks that he'd represent his server in such an unfortunate way.

>Team EU sends in EU2(zerg) and picks metalopolis

> EU2 > NA2

> Team NA sticks with NA2 and picks steppes of war

> EU2 > NA2

=> Results so far:
-NA2 is eliminated and can't play for his team anymore
-EU1 is down to one "life": he can still be sent in to play, but as soon as he loses he's out
-EU2 can still lose twice before getting knocked out

It's a bit funky, but think of it as a mix between a BO3 format and a winner's league format. If you win, you play on, but if you lose you're still not out, and you have the option of coming back later to help your team in a more advantageous matchup.
Overall, I think this'll make it feel more like a true war while staying fair to all parties involved.

[JackhammerIV]

And in terms of the lag....I guess we could do a test beforehand. Pass the guest pass to ppl on diff servers and try playing some games at a reasonable time for both EU and NA players. Sort of have a sense of how bad the lag could be. We could think of the lag as "home field advantage".

[Hammy]

On beta it was fine (I played on NA servers from europe, and on EU from the US eastcoast). On release I played on EU for the first few weeks from the US and it was playable. If the Aussies say it's fine on NA, then it should be ok for europeans too...