Multi-player tourney issue with no shows.

[yodamus]

Back about 2 years ago. When I first started playing tourneys. I had a very bad experience with a multi player tourney. That was 3 players. Winner advances. The issue was that 3 players had to be at start for game to begin. 2 of us were ready. 3rd player never arrived. Game never started. And I was eliminated without even playing and I was there to play. Almost never played a tourney after that.. hate to ask how many other never tried again . And I still will not join a tourney where all players have to be there for multi. If is 3 or 4 player and less than that are needed to start, never had an issue and the only ones I will join. Is this fixed in any way ??

[nik592]

If there are multiple players eliminated each game, and one player is booted, then there has to be some way to eliminate the other players from among the tied (non-booted) players. Currently, this seems to be based on account age, which I'm guessing is what happened. That hasn't changed. I'm not sure what you mean about "3 or 4 player and less than that are needed to start" - I've not seen any tournaments like that. If it's a 4p game and one player never plays, then either they will be booted, or the game will time out and places will be awarded based on time left to each player (so the one who never turns up will likely be booted, and possibly others if it's multiple elimination).

Probably what you want to look for is tourneys where only a single player is eliminated per game - regardless of the number of players. Then only the loser gets eliminated, whether that is by running out of time, being booted or just losing the game.

[yodamus]

To try and clarify. Some multi tourneys. Example. Are 3 players. Top 1 or 2 advance. In those there is a choice for the tourney maker to have it be 3 players needed to start game. Or 2 players. If they choose 3
players and 1 of the 3 never even show up. The game never starts and players get eliminated without even being able to play. If they choose 2 players to start. And 1 nevers show. Nobody gets eliminated and the game starts as normal with 2 players....... For 4 players. If they choose all 4 needed to start. If one of the 4 never shows. Players again will be eliminated without even playing. If they choose 3. Game starts as normal with 3 players. Huge difference. Scenario where all needed is very bad . Having players wait to play in a tourney and then being eliminated without ever playing is very discouraging. Extremely. I almost quit tourneys. I ask. Is this fixed in any way. Or should I still just avoid all multi player tourney that require all in attendance..... also. This happened so long ago. It may have been in a real time tourney if that makes a difference...

[nik592]

I don't play RT tournaments, so there could be something there.

The only thing I can think is where the creator specifies a minimum number of players per table, which may differ from the maximum number of players per table (eg. 4p games, but 3p minimum). This doesn't mean a 4p will start if only 3p show up - it means if there's 3 people left over when allocating tables of 4, it will put them on a table, rather than giving them all a bye (again, as far as I understand it). If there are only 2 people leftover, they will get a bye.

[BananaHarambe]

Are you talking about real time tournaments exclusively or does this include turn based tournaments where players either don’t show up or take an ungodly amount of time to play and get skipped?

If playing 3+ player tournaments be very careful with multi elimination tournaments. I make them sometimes and I am very careful to avoid the “eliminated without getting to complete a game issue” that would infuriate me if it every happened to me. I would generally trust a Swiss tournament more going in blind to the settings, but Swiss has its own issues sometimes.

Setting options are fairly rigid with number of players qualified per table being fixed. To avoid the issue you’re talking about it needs to be configured so that only 1 player is eliminated per table so the tournament can handle absent/skipped players. However, by doing this the number of players per table needs to be fixed. For example 2 players qualified should be tables of exactly 3. Having a 2 person table would make no sense because they would both advance. I’ve never tried to make a 2-3 player with 2 qualified. I expect that it wouldn’t let me.

I really like 3p 2q tournaments for games that play well at 3p and make sense with 2 players advancing (uncommon for 2v1 dogpile on the weakest link). The tournament structure works pretty well with a few skips required when hitting 8 players and 4 players, which almost always happens. Players can only get 1 skip per tournament, assigned randomly as needed and all games follow the correct 3p 2q principle except for rare occasions with 5 players to semifinals due to uneven player counts which makes things awkward. I recommend have the tournament size limited to a clean number that will fill up like 27, 40, 60, or 90. These sizes all create the best player counts per stage with minimal skips.

I think the current system makes 4p 3q quite awkward and poor fitting in my opinion. This is because of a quirk in the semifinals where the tournament will sometimes eliminate more players than it should to make space for 1 table at finals. For example, getting down to 8 players, 2 tables it will keep 6 players as usual but then the 6 player semifinals has a table of 4, 2 players skipped and now it will only advance 2 players instead of 3 players like the settings say. Every 4p 3q tournament will have this problem, some worse than others. Worse case is an uneven number of players resulting in a 7 player semifinals which would have 3 players skipped out only only 1st place from the game advancing to finals to play the 3 skipped players. The finals/semifinals will always be unfair to some degree.

[yodamus]

Thanks for all info. It was a real time tourney. Not turn based. I went way back in my books. So I will try the turn based ones needing all to start. Since I now play mostly turn based tourneys. I see where they start no matter what. Where the real time will wait 5 minutes. Then start booting. Thansk again for info all who reply