Tournament Finals Structure Promotes Stalling

Bloodartist wrote:

Kraus wrote:

The next flare of arguments that targets another forum user and/or their rhetoric will result in closing this topic.

You should instead aim to remove the posts in violation of the code of conduct, than lock a useful and interesting topic imo.

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Bloodartist wrote:

Kraus wrote:

The next flare of arguments that targets another forum user and/or their rhetoric will result in closing this topic.

You should instead aim to remove the posts in violation of the code of conduct, than lock a useful and interesting topic imo.

As to the topic, I cannot help but feel that bleed bounce is partly at fault for slower gameplay, because the threat of it prevents players applying consistent pressure to their prey.

But that isn't much different than in preliminary rounds;
There are of course ways around it that nobody uses, but the fact that stealthbleed has other methods and Cog/network strategies can typically hit the VP but seldom sweep by using DI2 on a deflection/Telepathic Misdirection during their preys turn makes the whole thing more specialized than that.

As to the thread as a whole, of course stalling is up to each judge to determine and stop.
But as a career level dweller at finals who never wins them, I've noticed more unjustified slow play from people who never make finals than those who are there often. What I classify as "unjustified " is taking the time to inquire about and check game states that have little to nothing to do with what a player would do. Such as; counting deflection in preys discard pile while playing Nos breed n boon before calling KRC, asking your grand predator for their pool total before rushing your preys minions, or asking If a media location can target allies when there are no allies on the table.

Luckily, these examples haven't happened in awhile.
The other issue is that I have yet to see a solid suggestion for a new system that doesn't just return to problems from years back. Even a situational additive that encourages players to get a single vp (that helps compared to current setup) hasn't come up.

So, if you are at a final, know the math. Seed one has to just not die while someone else is winning. Everyone else has a goal of how many people need ousted by you to win. The current system isn't the first one, and I vaguely recall hating the last one more.

Here are the questions that I'd like to use results data to answer empirically.

1. What percentage of preliminary rounds timeout?
2. What percentage of final rounds timeout?
3. What percentage of preliminary rounds end in GWs? In ties?
4. What percentage of final round end in GWs? In ties?
5. For final rounds, what is the percentage of wins by each seed?
6. For final rounds, what percentage of wins by that seed were the result of tiebreaker?

What I think the answers to these questions can tell us:
We can determine if there is a statistical outlier between preliminary and final rounds in terms of timeouts, GWs, and ties. Are the rates as we would expect? As the topic of this thread asserts? That finals timeout more because they promote stalling?
How important seeding is in winning. If we remove the wins based on ties, does seeding matter? This will answer DJHedgehog's question about whether seating choice affects the finals in a statistically significant way.
How much seeding really matters. If we consider the finals won by tiebreaker are we more likely to see the winner be someone other than the first seed? This may give us a clue as to whether first seeds are lounging about because they've already won when the game starts unless someone ousts.

We can probably cut this data down even further and do geographical analysis on it. Are there more timeouts in Europe, NA, SA or Pacific? Are the finals in line with the rates of GWs, ties, and timeouts in these regions? In other words, do Europeans finish more games in GWs in the preliminary rounds than other regions and if so, do the final rounds have the same rates? Maybe that would clue us into overly conservative play in the final rounds. Mind you, I'm not making any assertions about European play, just providing a possible example data point that we could analyze.

We began this thread all somewhat believing that stated premise. I think we have the data to find out the answers and properly inform ourselves. Once we know those answers we can determine what, if anything, we need to do about it.

Ankha, not sure if there's anyway I could help you gather this data, but please let me know if I can. Happy to write SQL queries or churn Excel data as necessary.

For future TDWA entries the organizers could attach the Archon file to the post. If someone would like to start collating the data, it'd be there.

Ankha wrote:

We do not store the round results, only the tournament results... There is no way to know how many rounds timed out.

Can you query the data base where the archons go?

Does its schema hold the tables for each archon?

Can you query how many total VP's each table had?

I know I'm stating obvious things and I don't want to teach the priest how to pray, but I'm covering all the bases here.