Finals are boring. Pt. 3: Rules for the finals

acbishop wrote:

Finalist are the best five players of the tournament during the previous round, for me not having one of them as the tournament winner is not logical.

Then there is still the option of not appointing a winner at all: no TWD, no qualification for continental championships, no rating bonus. Maybe the winner's prize could go to the lucky loser?

Finalist are the best five players of the tournament during the previous round, for me not having one of them as the tournament winner is not logical.

In a perfect world, where table seatings and deck choices have a neglicable effect on the outcome of games, I'd agree. In a tournament system where one lucky draw or one unlucky seating can mean the difference between winning the whole thing or not being remotely close to the finals, not so much.

The five players in the final are those with the best decks for the meta and/or the luckiest seatings and/or just the best players.

I mean, I don't have a solution for the problem or anything, but to claim that under the current ruleset (ie, 3 rounds) and circumstances (ie 15-player tournaments) the finalists are the best players that day is ludicrous.

Any other arguments about changing the rules for the finals aside, this just doesn't work.

2) If at end of time, all players are tied at 0.5 VPs, the winner is the player whose prey has the least amount of pool (not the first seeded player). This means that the only advantage enjoyed by the top seed is seating. Each player is then racing against all others, not just against the top seed.

Player pool totals are a small portion of table state. Everyone here has been in a game where they had 1-3 pool and everyone else had more but they were all but a lock for the game win. Pool total just doesn't indicate table strength and the five players who made the finals knows that.

The finals in a tournament should be played like every other round: each player plays to maximize the amount of Victory Points he or she can get. If you change that, then you aren't playing V:tES anymore, you are playing "V:tES Tournament."

If the finals are boring: it's because V:tES at the most competitive level is boring. The players who most regularly make the finals tend to play very conservatively, because "more is at stake."

In reality, if every player played like it was the finals, the preceding rounds would tend to be more boring. The "exciting" players and/or decks don't make the finals over conservative players/decks.

If you think about this, it reflects the theme of the game very well. Vampires don't take risks and are very conservative. I've seen vampire LARPers spend their time socializing, accumulating experience and never risking themselves, meanwhile all the neonate players are running around getting into combat and getting killed or progressing the story of the game.

There will be the elders, playing it conservative, and there are the neonates throwing sewer lids at each other.

direwolf wrote:

If the finals are boring: it's because V:tES at the most competitive level is boring. The players who most regularly make the finals tend to play very conservatively, because "more is at stake."

I've been in a lot of finals and I think that's disingenuous, some do but others e.g. Otto, Ruben Feldman etc are complete loose cannons who zooooooom along.

In larger tournaments e.g. EC day 1 you also would expect decks that are more make or break to make the final due to the numbers of GW/VP required (in practice this doesn't necessarily seem to be the case but the Day 1 finals this year had 3 fairly powerful damaging decks, one moderate and one wallish, Day 2 was a bit more mixed up)

I don't like the 'hotfix' saying if no one makes a VP, then no one wins (or the 6th wins, or whatever). It would favor an attitude of "ok, if I can't win then no one will".

Frankly, the best solution is simply that of the players themselves. I watched the finals of day 1 and day 2 and think the pace of day 2 was influenced by that of day 1, i.e. most players of day 2 realized what would happen if the game was too slow. Something similar happened in last year's french NC (there is also a qualifier system, so the NC is a 2-day event with a LCQ): the final of LCQ timed out due to 1/ players not realizing the top seed was legally doing whatever he could to get to a time-out without anyone ousted 2/ a gross amount of wasted time due to endless talks about Owen Evan's ability. The next day, pace was a little bit faster (I confess I contributed as a judge by announcing the remaining time very, very often).

Some players simply don't realize that if they spend 5minutes running their turn, there is no reason other players won't need the same amount of time. Some players blindly believe that even though a full table turn takes 20mn and there is 30mn remaining, there will somehow be 3-5 turns. And the worst thing is some of them will keep talking at length, consuming even more time. I mean, sure one might say that players can be tired at the end of the day, but it's simple to keep track of time using a clock, and simply do the math to estimate the remaining number of turns.

One additional difficulty is the perception of time that differs a lot depending on whether you're sitting at the final or a spectator. Maybe for regular tournaments, if there is a volunteer willing to type a transcript of the final taking into account the time spent at specific moment (ex a lengthy deal, resolution of Ashur, a Heart of Nizchetus that takes forever...), some players might better get the...err...feel of time or whatever.

A running gag in france is saying "there are two things that matter in this game : pool and vamps", as a very good player said once very seriously in a tournament (he actually meant something else, but it's more fun that way). But back on topic : in a final, time is an equally valuable resource as pool/vamps/cards in hand. Changing the rules of the finals won't solve the issue, it's changing the habit of players that will.

But it's just my newbie two cents.