Ink or Sink Testfire Tournament Feedback Thread

[Nintendome]

Hi squids! The first IoS tournament is coming to a close and the TOs are hard at work planning a bigger and better Ink or Sink tournament for all of you guys! However, this IoS was merely a testfire and we know things did not go perfectly.

That's where you come in! Please let us know what you liked and disliked! We are also very appreciative of all direct suggestions! We will try to implement whatever the community deems as correct!

Stay fresh!

 

[Protox]

GGs Unranked

 

[Batboo]

My suggestion is to make this either

Single elim
Smaller cap

Or maybe a swiss/round Robin would work well. Just don't make this a massive two week straight event

 

[Mr.HawK]

Ok im gonna make a list of this that people are probably gonna say, here we go

1. Ban Turf War from highly competitive tournaments
2. Do not have tournaments run for more than 2-3 days unless it is a league series of some kind
3. If a team in the losers bracket does not play their match in the scheduled time, disqualify them. teams need to work out their schedule instead of assuming they can play for X amount of time.
4. If a team member DC's multiple times regardless if the host changes, there needs to be a DQ rule enforced. or force their player to sub in with someone else.
5. Don't make these tournaments so big, that should be a special event type of thing. smaller tourneys are necessary
6. we need a list of ACCURATE map bans/counterpicks instead of just using the first five as a neutral selection.
7. ALOW TEAMS WITH MORE THAN 4 PEOPLE TO ENTER. we want subs to play just as much as anyone so we should give them a chance
8. F*** moray

aight, im done

 

[Kiver]

- Ban turf war.
- A randomizer to select the mode/map which is going to be played instead of the current form.

 

[GameGalaxy64]

Maybe you could do NA and EU tournaments separately so timing won't be an issue and you could fit it in a weekend. You could say Round 1 is 12 pm EST, Round 2 is 3 pm EST, etc.This way people are more engaged, streams get more views, and it's better condensed to so can run more tournaments.

Everything ChaosHawk said except Moray. I like that map. :p

 

[Mr.HawK]

Maybe you could do NA and EU tournaments separately so timing won't be an issue and you could fit it in a weekend. You could say Round 1 is 12 pm EST, Round 2 is 3 pm EST, etc.This way people are more engaged, steams get more views, and it's better condensed to so can run more tournaments.

Everything ChaosHawk said except Moray. I like that map. :p

moray is ecstasy for e liters. No bueno

 

[Burritoburger]

Ok im gonna make a list of this that people are probably gonna say, here we go

1. Ban Turf War from highly competitive tournaments
2. Do not have tournaments run for more than 2-3 days unless it is a league series of some kind
3. If a team in the losers bracket does not play their match in the scheduled time, disqualify them. teams need to work out their schedule instead of assuming they can play for X amount of time.
4. If a team member DC's multiple times regardless if the host changes, there needs to be a DQ rule enforced. or force their player to sub in with someone else.
5. Don't make these tournaments so big, that should be a special event type of thing. smaller tourneys are necessary
6. we need a list of ACCURATE map bans/counterpicks instead of just using the first five as a neutral selection.
7. ALOW TEAMS WITH MORE THAN 4 PEOPLE TO ENTER. we want subs to play just as much as anyone so we should give them a chance
8. F*** moray

aight, im done

tru/tru

I would say make the rules crystal clear and stick to them. There were enough problems earlier when it came to disconnects and 3v4s, etc. We need a concrete ruleset with few exceptions.

 

[Citrus]

Ban turf
dear god that mode is just bad

 

[AGES]

While I think rules really need to be changed in terms of map choices and game modes(please no turf or mode striking in general holy french onion dip), the big thing I want to talk about is scheduling. The schedule for the tournament was obviously pretty stretched out, with matches being required to be played every two days or so. Doing this forces individual scheduling, which requires people to line up the daily lives of at least 8 people who could be international to play a match. You have to remember that people are signing up for a tournament, and not a fully-fledged league. This leads to people being unable to play their matches, and parts of the bracket being behind. Scheduling so far apart is not quite the best way to go about hosting a tournament, and it should be condensed to be much shorter. However, there’s still the issue of players across many different timezones; a tournament could be set to end at 11pm for some Americans, yet end at 6am for Italians, with other European countries generally around that time. With worldwide tournaments that have plenty of participants like these, it’s nearly impossible to have 1 day tournaments like these. I can think of two good choices in this case that would help with keeping the tournament reasonably short while still including everyone. One would be to reduce the cap in which how many teams can sign up. The other option would be to have the tournament end at a certain round on day 1, with the later matches being played on a second day. This allows weekends to work well, plus the teams advancing further in bracket would be much more motivated to bring a full team together once again to play the second day. In order to decrease individual match time, I would suggest having non-semifinal matches be played just best of 3, with a time limit set in between matches where loadouts/maps are determined so things don’t drag on and use more precious time. I think with these changes(and maybe more that I can’t think of at this time) there can be a well-scheduled tournament which doesn’t last for too long and cause issues with individual scheduling.


That being said good job on running a pretty successful tourney. Hoping losers’/grand finals don’t end up being ruined by mode striking, though I'm hyped to see where you guys could take these tourneys in the future. Good luck

 

[Agosta44]

-ban turf
-limit time between matches
-play multiple rounds per day. if playing during the week is a problem play over 2 weekends.
-I'm very iffy on Rainmaker. I really don't find it competitively viable or enjoyable like SZ or TC is.
-Limit or ban teams from swapping members. I saw over the past few weeks that teams would ask for new members between every round.
-I've found that alternating between SZ and TC to be very enjoyable in scrims. All rounds should follow the same format rather than a different game mode.
-1-2-1/3 works and I think it should continue being used. I would rather this than outright banning stages.

 

[GameGalaxy64]

While I think rules really need to be changed in terms of map choices and game modes(please no turf or mode striking in general holy french onion dip), the big thing I want to talk about is scheduling. The schedule for the tournament was obviously pretty stretched out, with matches being required to be played every two days or so. Doing this forces individual scheduling, which requires people to line up the daily lives of at least 8 people who could be international to play a match. You have to remember that people are signing up for a tournament, and not a fully-fledged league. This leads to people being unable to play their matches, and parts of the bracket being behind. Scheduling so far apart is not quite the best way to go about hosting a tournament, and it should be condensed to be much shorter. However, there’s still the issue of players across many different timezones; a tournament could be set to end at 11pm for some Americans, yet end at 6am for Italians, with other European countries generally around that time. With worldwide tournaments that have plenty of participants like these, it’s nearly impossible to have 1 day tournaments like these. I can think of two good choices in this case that would help with keeping the tournament reasonably short while still including everyone. One would be to reduce the cap in which how many teams can sign up. The other option would be to have the tournament end at a certain round on day 1, with the later matches being played on a second day. This allows weekends to work well, plus the teams advancing further in bracket would be much more motivated to bring a full team together once again to play the second day. In order to decrease individual match time, I would suggest having non-semifinal matches be played just best of 3, with a time limit set in between matches where loadouts/maps are determined so things don’t drag on and use more precious time. I think with these changes(and maybe more that I can’t think of at this time) there can be a well-scheduled tournament which doesn’t last for too long and cause issues with individual scheduling.


That being said good job on running a pretty successful tourney. Hoping losers’/grand finals don’t end up being ruined by mode striking, though I'm hyped to see where you guys could take these tourneys in the future. Good luck

What do you want to see in replace of mode striking?

 

[Agosta44]

What do you want to see in replace of mode striking?

Alternate and extend sets to BO7 or BO9.

 

[Shirma Akayaku]

After some time watching the tournament play out, I can already agree with people on banning Turf War. It has it's issues from a competitive point of view, but from a spectators point a view, it's even worse.

As a small example, if you watched the Nintendo World Championship when they played Splatoon in Turf War, they had both the monitor AND Gamepad streaming to the big screen. If it weren't for that Gamepad, spectators would just be left frustrated and wondering because they don't know who'd be winning.

Now, look at your average person streaming Splatoon... Do they stream the Gamepad, no. Why? Because it's expensive to have your Gamepad modified to record it and it's not that worth while in the end since most games don't utilize it well. Anyways, when you watch Turf War, it doesn't give you a sense of who's winning or losing because you can't view the map, you only get one player's view, the first 30 to 50 seconds of the match doesn't matter because the whole map isn't covered and you won't know who's in the lead. Now, I know there is an indicator of who's winning or losing the match based on the size of the squids on top, but whenever there's a stalemate / steady ground between the two teams, you still won't know who's in the lead, and even the competitors themselves won't know who's in the lead.

With all this in mind, you can see why spectators and competitors don't like Turf War. Spectators would have a hard time rooting / booing someone when they can't see how much progress is being made, competitors will have a hard time gauging on who's winning during a stalemate, and since it comes down to how much ink you spread, it can leave people feeling cheated in the end result, even if it looks one team was supposed to win over the other.

 

[Power]

Ok im gonna make a list of this that people are probably gonna say, here we go

1. Ban Turf War from highly competitive tournaments
2. Do not have tournaments run for more than 2-3 days unless it is a league series of some kind
3. If a team in the losers bracket does not play their match in the scheduled time, disqualify them. teams need to work out their schedule instead of assuming they can play for X amount of time.
4. If a team member DC's multiple times regardless if the host changes, there needs to be a DQ rule enforced. or force their player to sub in with someone else.
5. Don't make these tournaments so big, that should be a special event type of thing. smaller tourneys are necessary
6. we need a list of ACCURATE map bans/counterpicks instead of just using the first five as a neutral selection.
7. ALOW TEAMS WITH MORE THAN 4 PEOPLE TO ENTER. we want subs to play just as much as anyone so we should give them a chance
8. F*** moray

aight, im done

Going to address this first as it covers what many others believe to be issues.

1. Turf is gone, no question.
2. Next IoS event will try to run only for a weekend.
3. We will be much more strict with the rules, don't worry about that.
4. Working on that...
5.The team cap will be lowered for the next tourney.
6. Working on that...
7. We allowed teams to have a cap of 8 people. Maybe it was not clear enough, which was probably our fault.
8. Working on that...

All other suggestions are being reviewed. Thank you for the feedback, keep it coming.

 

[Box]

I'm not really in the mood for another Ink or Sink. And it's not just because the TOs stumbled over every little decision and went back on almost half of their rules. It's because they felt entitled to secretly fix the bracket while lying about it.

Here's the quote from the IoS thread that got me:

i know i'm a TO, and that automatically makes me a little shady when referring to these kinds of matters

the only "seeding" that took place in randomizing the bracket is that we wanted to make sure no two teams from the same squad fought eachother in round 1.

and i know a lot of people have a lot of different opinions about squads and how they're treated. as much as we want to keep this tourney community-driven and modify rules based on feedback, this is the one exception. all the TOs are part of squads, we like the squad community here on squidboards, and we don't want half of a squad's entrants dropping in the first round due to an unlucky roll.

so, we just kept randomizing the bracket until no two teams from the same squad faced off in round 1.

You can't do this. It's not the fact that the brackets were changed. The issue I have when I read this is that Math believes he's entitled to have his tournament play out in a certain way without telling people. How can I trust any decision or random selection to be fair when I know the person making is willing to secretly do whatever they want if it makes the tournament more interesting? If the next Ink or Sink uses predetermined random map pools decided by the TOs and Arowana Mall doesn't appear in any of the finals, how will I know if that's because the maps were random or because the TOs thought it wouldn't be an interesting map to watch? I wouldn't have any reason to trust them if I suspected any rigging took place because they unapologeticly declare that they don't care that rigging took place. It's worse if some edge case on the rules happens and I can't trust the TOs to make the proper call because I know they care more about an exciting tournament than fairness and transparency.

Keep in mind Math says this right after RoyLee completely denies any bracket rigging took place "End. Of. Story." I also called them on rigging the brackets before they were even published and they still had the nerve to do it. I'm disappointed that I didn't check the brackets more thoroughly when they were posted.

I would have called this out at the time it was posted if Kat hadn't said he would ban people for continuing discussion about it. Now we have a feedback thread where it it certainly appropriate.

 

[pixelatedcody]

I think the only complaint, is that if a team can't make the schedule, or they are more than 25min late. they should be DQ'd.

You can't hold up a tourney like that, nor force a team of 4 into a 3v3.

And a Coin flip shouldn't be a factor for two teams that can't agree, (IE: One team lost a member and cannot do a 3v4 and doesn't have a sub, so they request a 3v3. The team with 4 players doesn't want to do that. so they disagree.)

If you enter a Tourney that allows subs. please for the love of pizza, have a substitute or two in case someone doesn't show.

if you can't get all 4 players together at the scheduled time then don't enter. Period.

 

[Nintendome]

I'm not really in the mood for another Ink or Sink. And it's not just because the TOs stumbled over every little decision and went back on almost half of their rules. It's because they felt entitled to secretly fix the bracket while lying about it.

Here's the quote from the IoS thread that got me:


You can't do this. It's not the fact that the brackets were changed. The issue I have when I read this is that Math believes he's entitled to have his tournament play out in a certain way without telling people. How can I trust any decision or random selection to be fair when I know the person making is willing to secretly do whatever they want if it makes the tournament more interesting? If the next Ink or Sink uses predetermined random map pools decided by the TOs and Arowana Mall doesn't appear in any of the finals, how will I know if that's because the maps were random or because the TOs thought it wouldn't be an interesting map to watch? I wouldn't have any reason to trust them if I suspected any rigging took place because they unapologeticly declare that they don't care that rigging took place. It's worse if some edge case on the rules happens and I can't trust the TOs to make the proper call because I know they care more about an exciting tournament than fairness and transparency.

Keep in mind Math says this right after RoyLee completely denies any bracket rigging took place "End. Of. Story." I also called them on rigging the brackets before they were even published and they still had the nerve to do it. I'm disappointed that I didn't check the brackets more thoroughly when they were posted.

I would have called this out at the time it was posted if Kat hadn't said he would ban people for continuing discussion about it. Now we have a feedback thread where it it certainly appropriate.

I understand and empathize with your frustration. Unfortunately, the seeding of the bracket did not fall under my purview for this tournament. However, I promise that the next bracket will be completely randomized. If you want, I can record the challonge seeding randomization and upload it to my YouTube channel. That goes for anything else you think deserves transparency.

Please remember that the TOs are donating their time and effort to this tournament simply because they want to see the competitive Splatoon community thrive. We are imperfect, not malicious.

 

[DaisyFan]

Maybe you guys need to start up with something small before heading with huge bracket to be honest, real talk. Also need to be harder with the schedule of the tournament. ITS a NO for long tourney i know its not your fault, but seriously this need to be working. i wont wait days to play my game sets, its very not worth it, this isn't a league. if team can't, give them a other hour or DQ'd a lot of people wont tolerate waiting hours and hours. it does also take off the fun of everyone too.
if you want to save it for the name of it. I say Ink or Sink should be tourney league.

 

[jamesrcade]

I think right now a good size tournament would be 32 Teams and Double Elimination. Done across a weekend (it possible an early start like 3pm EST for us European folk), only sign up if you can commit 3-5 hours on both days.

Disconnect rule needs work, if someone disconnects I think it should be on them. The result should stand, and next game a new host can be chosen and the team can sub in another player if they think the disconnect will happen again. If it was early on and evidence has been provided, maybe the teams and TO can agree to replay the match but really disconnects should not be happening.

Map/Mode striking is a big discussion, I still think it's early to be removing options completely but I understand if that's what the majority wants. As long as we get a variety of maps/modes played I don't mind how it's done.