MOC Madness Tournament Update

[Mandalorian Candidat]

Not bad! 12 of my 16 picks went through to the next round.

[Daz Hoo]

Since I voted in all the previous rounds, I find it less time consuming to vote this time since I already checked out most of the candidates that are still in. This sweet sixteen poll does present some tough choices to make though...

Good luck to all the contestants that are still in!

[Blackicep8ntball]

For future rounds of the contest beyond the sweet 16, I wonder what you guys think about switching around the order of some of the brackets to avoid those who have been in the first couple from getting the most visibility. Bracket 1 gets the most views, meaning it's entries become the most familiar. People tend to vote for what is familiar to them (good old' political science). Now, it's not going to mean a difference of 20 votes, but it could mean a difference of a few votes, and at this stage of the contest winners could come down to just a few votes. Thus, I propose moving bracket 1 down a little, moving another up, and switching stuff around throughout the rest of the contest to avoid such results. Just a thought :-)

[Nezumiiro]

So far, so good.

[Solo]

New round is up!

[ikarus]

This is getting so exciting

Could you also post in the chart, by how many votes an entry one the slot (even for the first round) ?

[Solo]

I didn't want to, but that's only due to laziness. Maybe I'll take a crack at that tonight since you asked.

[X-8]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! (end Vader voiceover) Where did the Cheeseburger and the Broken Regret go?
Congrats to the remaining 8.

[ikarus]

@Solo: Thanks, you're the best. take your time

[banthafodder]

I, too, was a little surprised that the Broken Regret was out at this round. I thought for sure that it would be in the top 4.

[paltouras]

Hi everyone.

First of all I would like to congratulate FBTB for the great idea of such a contest.

After that, I would like to take my turn and give some ideas for the future possible similar tournaments, since the feedback is welcome by the administrators.

In the effort to do so I am asking for your understanding if my English are not that easily understood and especially for the size of my post.

I believe everything starts from the group stage and the way the groups are fixed before we even get to the phase of “32” or “64”..

The better and the fairer the groups are set the better the rest of the tournament will get.
So, in details … :

1) Instead of (possibly) trying to figure out how the ships could be divided into each group, I think it’s more fair and easy to just take the total number of the ships registered and just divide it into four groups with each one containing a quarter of the total number of participants in order of priority. Priority means the registration order.
If for example the number of participants is 103 … then the first 26 and the next 26 and etc up to the last 25, will constitute the 4 quarters of the total 4 groups.

2) Also, I really think that the way of adding pictures should be different. I believe the ships should not be visible to everyone before the end of the deadline for applying to the contest.
That means that the chances for copying one another are much less. In this scenario also, every participant would know their place in the registering order by the exact time of their application being filed (by receiving a confirmation email about their place in the order by the administrator).

3) The criteria for participation should be much more clear and strict. For instance, Picture of ship, Picture of Bounty Hunter and Picture of Prisoner Compartment and of course NAME for both of them are essential. Think that some people have added a whole story around the name and back round of each ship and others haven’t even named their projects. Apart from that, some haven’t even presented a picture of their prisoner compartment and others added more pictures than the ones requested.

4) The next important step in order to advance to a more interesting phase of “32”, I think would be the number of votes. Increasing them, would be extremely helpful, In order to avoid the burst of the “friends voting” paradox and many dilemmas between ships we would like to vote or some that we just don’t have enough votes to do so(except ours).I believe that the votes should be maximum 8 and least 6. It would be ideal if the FBTB voting system would not let us vote unless it could somehow count our votes and keep us following that condition.

5) Reaching the final “32”, things could follow a typical Baskeball Playoff system.

Each group has 8 to advance. So at the next round the opponents could be 1vs8, 2vs7, 3vs6, 4vs5.
I think that the program should be set like that, before the beginning of the contest. For instance 1st group winners against 4th group winners and 2nd group vs 3rd group (or anything similar to that). The next couples could be also mixed up (the winners of 1st group vs 4th against the winners of 3rd vs 2nd) and so on …

6) At the round of “16” or the round of “8” , the grids that include the possible winners of each group should face each other so that could give the chance to some others advance to a higher level. Doing that in the phase of final “8” I think is better because if u take a close look on how the things are right now, the only think that will actually change, is that one less “favourite” will be qualifying and one more “underdog” will have a chance to go for the “bronze” medal.

GENERALLY after the group stage is easier to lay out a fair plan of brackets based on the basketball playoff system as long as everything is figured out and presented to the public from the beginning of the tournament!!!

Once more, CONGRATULATIONS for the idea and thank you for your patience!!!

Respectfully,

Paltouras

[ikarus]

@paltouras
While I generally agree with your statement, I don't think adding more layers of rules would improve the experience, it would just make the whole thing a lot more complicated. E.g. there are minimum requirements for posting pictures, beyond that it's the authors burden to present his work as good as possible. Anonymous posting would help slightly, but one would still recognize his friends' MOCs.

What I would like, considering how many entered, special winners (e.g. "wackiest ship", "most massive ship"), awarded by a simple vote. One of my favourites was eliminated in the first round ...

[onions]

1) Instead of (possibly) trying to figure out how the ships could be divided into each group, I think it’s more fair and easy to just take the total number of the ships registered and just divide it into four groups with each one containing a quarter of the total number of participants in order of priority. Priority means the registration order.
If for example the number of participants is 103 … then the first 26 and the next 26 and etc up to the last 25, will constitute the 4 quarters of the total 4 groups.

We used a different, more random method in dividing the entries into their respective pools.

2) Also, I really think that the way of adding pictures should be different. I believe the ships should not be visible to everyone before the end of the deadline for applying to the contest.
That means that the chances for copying one another are much less. In this scenario also, every participant would know their place in the registering order by the exact time of their application being filed (by receiving a confirmation email about their place in the order by the administrator).

This requires too much work on the administrators' end of managing the tournament. I have admonished time and time again that contest entries is not a race. It's up to the individual when they want to enter. If they want to enter the day after, that's their prerogative. If they're smart, they'll wait until the later on in the submission window so as not to show their hand too early.

3) The criteria for participation should be much more clear and strict. For instance, Picture of ship, Picture of Bounty Hunter and Picture of Prisoner Compartment and of course NAME for both of them are essential. Think that some people have added a whole story around the name and back round of each ship and others haven’t even named their projects. Apart from that, some haven’t even presented a picture of their prisoner compartment and others added more pictures than the ones requested.

If you haven't noticed the contest rules is like a mile long and i've made as clear as possible each rule of the contest. This is a building contest, not a fiction short story contest. Names were not required and will never will be unless otherwise stated.

4) The next important step in order to advance to a more interesting phase of “32”, I think would be the number of votes. Increasing them, would be extremely helpful, In order to avoid the burst of the “friends voting” paradox and many dilemmas between ships we would like to vote or some that we just don’t have enough votes to do so(except ours).I believe that the votes should be maximum 8 and least 6. It would be ideal if the FBTB voting system would not let us vote unless it could somehow count our votes and keep us following that condition.

with the top 8 from each pool advancing, i purposefully restricted the number of votes for each member to 4 so that they are forced to choose their very favorites. The more votes you have to play with, the less meaningful each vote becomes.

5) Reaching the final “32”, things could follow a typical Baskeball Playoff system.

Each group has 8 to advance. So at the next round the opponents could be 1vs8, 2vs7, 3vs6, 4vs5.
I think that the program should be set like that, before the beginning of the contest. For instance 1st group winners against 4th group winners and 2nd group vs 3rd group (or anything similar to that). The next couples could be also mixed up (the winners of 1st group vs 4th against the winners of 3rd vs 2nd) and so on …

As mentioned before, Round of 32 pairings were styled after the NCAA basketball tournament. What i did differently was match up each pair from different pools. having Rank 1 Pool A go up against Rank 8 Pool A doesn't make any sense since that would basically be the group pool play all over again. Instead, I would mix and match the pairings from different pools to add a little variety. So Rank 1 Pool A would go up against Rank 8 Pool D. I spent about 10 hours one night trying all sorts of combinations until i came up with a pairing scheme that i was satisfied with in terms of randomness and variety. I explained all of this before.

6) At the round of “16” or the round of “8” , the grids that include the possible winners of each group should face each other so that could give the chance to some others advance to a higher level. Doing that in the phase of final “8” I think is better because if u take a close look on how the things are right now, the only think that will actually change, is that one less “favourite” will be qualifying and one more “underdog” will have a chance to go for the “bronze” medal.

GENERALLY after the group stage is easier to lay out a fair plan of brackets based on the basketball playoff system as long as everything is figured out and presented to the public from the beginning of the tournament!!!

Once more, CONGRATULATIONS for the idea and thank you for your patience!!!

Respectfully,

Paltouras

i don't understand this suggestion completely, but it sounds like it strays too far from the tournament format. underdogs always have a chance to advance. the last round, we saw a fair number of upsets. if you view each pairing in each round, the top entry in the poll is the higher rank. perhaps next year's tournament, we may format the grid a little differently to show rankings and votes.

i appreciate your enthusiasm for the tournament, but please keep in mind that we the admins do what we can to provide a fair and level playing field for all of our contests and address every possible aspect. 99.9% of the time there is a method to our madness, especially when it comes to contests that break the mold of the simple voting scheme such as the Podrace Challenge and MOC Madness. we've been accused of having too many rules at times, but thankfully that is few and far between.

@ikarus: we the admins (maybe i should start an acronym for that, WTA) have discussed a way to highlight some of our favorites. nothing's been decided on yet but this is something i definitely want to do.

[ajcross]

What were vote counts from the round of 32 and the round of 16?

[onions]

What were vote counts from the round of 32 and the round of 16?

those polls were moved to the parent forum: Contests & Community Builds

[ka.lego]

I know I'm a bit late, but congrats to all who made the Top 32, Sweet 16, and Final 4. Props to FBTB for this contest...in all seriousness, it's slightly out of character for me to enter online contests like this, but Empire Strikes Back & Bounty Hunters...who could resist?