Great Gobble Tournament Postmortem

[DUEL Empress]

The Great Gobble Tournament is over--hurrah! First, I'd like to thank everyone who participated in any way, for anyone that helped me fine-tune the rules and general event, and Matt and Kheld for helping me create it in the first place and letting me take the lead on my first tournament.

Being that it was my first tournament, I'd love some feedback from the community!

What did you like about the tournament? What didn't you like? What did you think about the scoring? No loss? Was it too long/short? Do you prefer a tournament like this for Panther's Claw over a one-night deal? Are you all burnt out from too much dueling? Did there need to be mini-events mixed in? More prizes? Different prizes? Less corny prizes? What about the writing element mixed in?

TELL ME ALL THE THINGS!

[Canaan]

Tournament was great! I'd love for the no-loss thing to carry on. That's the only reason I participated, no offense. You put together a great thing here, J.

[Delahada]

It was a good tournament. Got me dueling again, which is something because I told myself I was never going to ever again. But then... I especially liked the NO LOSS aspect. Because I lost a lot of matches and would have been annoyed being stuck at Glass again. Hoping for another DoF no loss event so that I can work on climbing up to Emerald. Probably not gonna DoF again until then because flopping back down to Glass again after making it up to mid rank is extremely discouraging. That happened before. I'm glad it isn't happening this time.

[Bailey Raptis]

I know I didn't participate in this, so take that with whatever grains of salt you want to, but I did have some thoughts about this tournament.

1. What did you like about the tournament? I think it was great to get so many people out and dueling, especially on nights which (at least in recent memory) haven't been very busy or popular nights for dueling. The RP elements were good, the writing prompt was good, and it feels like it was fairly structured for what the goal of it was.
2. What didn't you like? This could very well be an indictment of me, and my general play style and preferences now, but for me, it sort of felt like once I missed the first couple of nights of dueling, there wasn't any real reason for me to bring Bailey by to participate in this, at least for the main "fight Fists duels for a shot at the title" thing. It felt a lot like the first Hydra Cup, which was structured to give an advantage to the "Duel, duel, duel!" folks, and I've never really been one of those players. I think the Empress points helped mitigate that some (giving a little incentive to fight even beyond getting one of the titles) but not enough for me to get Bailey in. I would be interested in hearing what other folks who participated but were at the lower end of the point spectrum felt about their participation. Was it fun? Was it worth it? I also got the feeling it locked some people into playing the same character for a week, which may or may not have been a problem for them. Be interested in hearing from them too.
3. What did you think about the scoring? The scoring felt fine to me, but I probably am not the best judge of that since I wasn't actively participating. I have no idea how it "felt" to get those points and be in competition against the other players/characters.
4. No loss? I agree that no-loss is a good idea, both here and hopefully moving forward with DoF.
5. Was it too long/short? A week is about as long as I think you would want something like this to go on. Any longer, and you run the risk of that first Hydra happening. Since it took place over a Cycle (IIRC), the one team that had people willing to show up night in and night out got a huge lead on the rest of the teams, and the end result was a lot of those teams without power duelers just gave up on it. So I don't think it actually helped goose dueling in the way we hoped for. Looking at the scoring for this, although the Underdogs had a clear point advantage (and numbers advantage in characters/players), the actual battle for the titles was very close.
6. Do you prefer a tournament like this for Panther's Claw over a one-night deal? I'm always going to prefer one-night tournaments, but if the community prefers events like this over one-night tournaments, well, I think we should be doing whatever it is that gets the most people out and about.
7. Are you all burnt out from too much dueling? N/A.
8. Did there need to be mini-events mixed in? More prizes? Different prizes? Less corny prizes? Events seemed fine, though I didn't really see what was going on in room specifically. More Empress prizes might have been nice, but not a deal-breaker. Corny prizes are super-fun.
9. What about the writing element mixed in? This was great. It was really fun to see characters doing these non-dueling things, seeing people flex their creative muscles and play off of each others' ideas in that thread. And ultimately, that's the core of FFRP, isn't it?

TL;DR: Although this sort of thing isn't for me, I do think it was a net positive for the community and should be done again.

[Alasdair Galloway]

The no loss aspect was great, and yes, this should be a regular thing. I fear any interest and uptick in DoF duels this generated might fall off as losses count again.

I do think a tweak can be made to the length. It was sad to see that on some nights it went up against other scheduled hosting events. Maybe have it go for a couple weeks but allow a few days off? This would hopefully avoid conflict with other activities as well as burnout from feeling like you have to duel 3 times every single day straight for a week to keep up.

To echo Bailey, I think that this did promote powerdueling, and for people joining late or who may not have as much time, I can see how someone might think "what's the point?" when people are so far ahead in points and impossible to catch. The Empress Points and rewards were cool and I liked them, but they aren't going to give you the same feeling of a reward as one of the top prizes.

To that I'd say to tweak the scoring system, or maybe even just randomize one of the award winners. Maybe someone shows up each night dressed in a turkey outfit, and defeating them earns you 10 points, and you only have one opportunity (per night or event, whichever works best). I also think this would help to alleviate where people might feel "locked in" to having to use the same character for the whole event.

But I do want to say it was very fun and nice to see so many people active. I liked this event a lot and it was run fantastically.

And I love corny prizes so will always say yes to more of those!

[JewellRavenlock]

Thank you to everyone who responded so far! I definitely have some food for thought for tournaments going forward.

We did try to discourage/limit "power dueling" by limiting the amount of fights that counted each night, so I'm not sure how else to limit that going forward? Does win percentages work better? I don't know these things!

Maybe winners/prizes of some sort every night and then a big prize at the end? That could also benefit those who'd prefer to bring different characters out throughout the week (they would just maybe miss out on gaining the big prize) and could also alleviate the feeling of "I'm already behind in points so what's the point"?

[Jake]

Part of TDL's (and IFL's) system was MPDPD...Match Point Differential Per Duel...with a minimum # of duels.

So...if Dueler X had 3 duels, and Dueler Y had 4, they could be compared on the basis of how well they fought. Not necessarily the number of times they fought.

So, a dueler with three duels: 5-0, 5-2, 5-3 = (15-5)/3 = 3.33
A dueler with four duels: 5-3, 4-5, 5-2, 5-1 = (19-11)/4 = 2.00

Between the two, the dueler with the 3 wins has a better scoring ratio.

Depending on the length of the tourney, that could be something you try.

Three duels a night max. 10 duels minimum (over the course of a week or so) to establish a "score". Then compare who's getting the best MPDPD score to determine a winner. Having 30 duels isn't necessarily better than simply having 10 good duels.