EVE Alliance Tournament Discussion

from http://poeticstanziel.blogspot.ca/2012/07/at-x-zero-point-teams-out-of-group.html

It seems CCP doesn't quite know how to put together a Rules section for the Alliance Tournament. They're scattering the rules across the tournament website pages. A tad hard to figure out what the rules are if they aren't all in one place.

Hail Mary setups, for extra points, are possible. The rule explaining this is not on the Rules page, but rather on the Format section of the tournament website. Nutty.


So, is a zero point team really out of the tournament? Perhaps not. It really depends on whether CCP is allowing any meta-gaming. But I'll touch on that after constructing a possible week two match that could send a zero point team into the group stage.

Test Alliance and No Holes Barred both have zero points. They are fighting each other on Saturday. Let's say Test really really wants to get to the group stage. How? Well, Test builds a 10 point team. No Holes Barred builds a 50 point team. If Test Alliance wins, they earn 50 + 40 = 90 points, plus their 25% win bonus for a total of 112.5 points. Which should be more than enough to get into the group stage.

But, how does a 10 point team win against a 50 point team? With ISK. Test Alliance offers No Holes Barred some large sum, let's say 50B ISK, to put together 50 points of terrible fits, basically to throw the match. Let the 10 points worth of Test ships blow up all 50 points of No Holes ships.

This year, CCP banned alliances from fielding more than one team, the B and C team rule. Which is fine, in my books, since it allows more alliances to participate, who might not have been able to otherwise. According to their rules page, CCP may in fact be banning all obvious meta-gaming is obvious during the tournament, disallowing all thrown matches of the super-obvious variety. The following rule can be found on the Rules page:


Potentially banning meta-gaming? Paying other alliances to throw matches is a time-honoured tradition of the Alliance tournament.

As it stands, if No Holes and Test Alliance go head-to-head, 50 point setup versus 50 point setup, neither team stands any chance, whatsoever, of getting into the group stage. Meta-gaming plays an important role here. One team gets to advance (most likely) and the other gets some phat ISK for the alliance war chest.

My interest level in the first day of competition during week two has dropped significantly. The majority of those matches mean nothing. At least with meta-gaming, the spectator is left to wonder whether any backroom funny business has gone on before each match.

Bit of a shame really, if the Test Alliance/No Holes Barred scenario (and scenarios like it) are not allowed to happen. That's taking CCP's paranoia over the Hydra/Outbreak final from last year, a bit too far.

Fine reporting

Is there any other type of promotion? Where possible, I post the entire article, so that you don't have to click through if you don't want too.

I was trying to think of some third party metagaming options where a 0 point team pays off a 62.5 point team to throw their match in order to artificially lower the cutoff point, thus allowing the 0 point team to field maybe a 40 or 45 point team, win, look competitive about it, and then squeak through into the next round. But I think that given the way the matches are set up, it would be nearly impossible for it to work, since the 62.5 point team would run a very real risk of not getting through. Eh, who knows though.

I'm not a tournament administrator, but I think this is a legitimate concern for today.

I think meta is inevitable and thats probably alright as long as people aren't needlessly wasting viewer time. The new rules are a direct result of people feeling really frustrated with having to watch the finals last year, so my understanding is that the AT team needed a way to respond if that sort of match took place again.

The tournament is caught in an awkward place of needing to provide something thats actually exciting to watch, even though it also loves having the backdoor deals and stories that are typical to eve. If you can do both, I doubt you will get punished. If you conga and use the entire 10 minutes to make me and michael bolton discuss his mustache longer than anyone would ever want us to, you might find yourself in some trouble.

Hope this doesn't end up being an issue, gl to everyone today.