CCP Mindstar
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Posted - 2010.06.10 11:36:00 -
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Hey guys, a bit of background on this format for you, if you haven't been following the previous tournaments some of this might be new [;)]
The first time this particular format was used was back in Alliance Tournament VI, and there was a fairly decent discussion of the format in this thread.
To recap the basic idea behind the system and why we do it this way:
The "World Cup Pool" arrangement of Tournaments 1 - 5 supported around 48 alliances over the 6 days of the tournament. We wanted to increase the number of alliances to 64 without increasing the time it takes to run the tournament. We settled on the idea of qualifying (over 4 days), and having a 32 team single elimination format on the finals weekend.
There are a couple of ways you can go from 64 - 32 teams over the (64 match) qualifying period, but we ended up settling on the current method. It gives everyone an equal chance at any point to qualify. I personally like the way swiss systems match (theoretically) even teams, as it keeps the fights in the qualifying rounds interesting, and Round 2 still presents a challenge to even the best teams.
As has been pointed out it is possible to try and play the system - that has been known for 3 tournaments now, and we will see how that works out for Hydra this time. At the end of the day it's still qualifying. Regardless of how you make it in, you still have to beat your way to the top of the 32 finalists to win, and the real tests are there.
Previous tournaments have showed the minimum that qualifying teams need do is to win one match, and score a reasonable amount of points in losing (if they lose a match). In the last tournament, the lowest qualifying team was Dystopia Alliance with a total of 135 points. Ie. they scored a whopping 10 points in the match they lost. And they still qualified for the finals.
Every year the topic of teams that "should" or "shouldn't" get in comes up. My question to you is this: If a team gets completely stomped in a match by another team - are they really finals material?
Oh and just to answer the OP - wikipedia taught me how to do a swiss draw 
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