EVE Alliance Tournament Discussion

The CCP folks stated on the first day that part of the reason they switched to the double elimination format is that they didn't like having matches that don't matter in group stages. Personally, I like group stages for the early stages of a tournament better than just jumping straight into the bracket. It allows you to seed the bracket better depending on how teams finished in their groups etc. In gerneral a bracket that is seeded by groups prior tends to have better matches in the later rounds and less of big powerhouses knocking each other out in the first round.

I believe group stages should be reconsidered in future tournaments as there are easy ways to make group stages that don't have "irrelevant matches" or situations where teams are playing for points.

One prime example is to rip the MSL group stages from Korean Starcraft.

-Four teams in a group, first two matches are as normal.
-Next the two winners play, followed by the two losers playing.
-Winner of the winners match gets #1 in their group, loser of the losers match is #4
-The remaining two teams play a final match to determine places 2 and 3 in the group.

This format makes it so that every match matters, there is less chance of throwing and collusion because going 2-0 means having to play one less match, and after that each match is playing for your overall survival. It also provides almost as many matches per group (only one less) that the old group stages did, which means more content on stream.

I like the format for the New Eden Open for later stages in the bracket, but opening up with a modified group stages could make the bracket generation much less... random.