There were a couple of development suggestions in different places, so I thought it is better if I create a separate topic for this purpose.
Here you can give me your suggestions and we can discuss the direction in which the Tour could be further developed.

I copy two topics here and start with them.

• by tornado
  I have a question. How come only the best six results from the 500 and 250 tournaments are included? Most of the tournaments are 500 and 250 level. A player can technically play around 30 such tournaments in one season, right? I feel like Grand Slams and Masters are overemphasized this way. I assume you're doing it this way because it may be too much work to include all the tournaments in ranking calculations, in which case that's fine, I understand :)
  
• by huddyj
  @tornado, Ekstone uses the same ranking system as the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) because the AWP is modelled off that.
  
• by Quicksilver
  @tornado -
  
  A big reason to cap it is because otherwise your ranking suffers if you don't play most of the tournaments. By capping the number of 250/500 events that count you can then skip those 250/500 templates that you don't like w/o any penalty (which makes it more fun for the players who hate a bunch of templates but also want to do well, which is a lot of players I think).
  
• by tornado
  Thanks for the responses.
  
  @huddyj: I knew he uses the ATP ranking system, but I didn't know that's how ATP did it. I thought ATP rankings included all tournaments. I just checked and I can confirm that Ekstone, of course, is doing it the right way. There is one minor difference which, in my opinion, doesn't require any changes to the AWP ranking system since it may be too much additional work for Ekstone. In the ATP ranking system, every tournament out of the 'big 12' (4 Grand Slams and 8 Masters 1000s) that a player skips or doesn't play for whatever reason makes him eligible to have an additional 'small' (500s and 250s) tournament be counted towards his ranking. So if you only play 10 out of the 12 big tournaments, you can have 8 instead of the current 6 small tournaments be counted towards your ranking, which makes sense IMO. I'm not sure how difficult this is to implement for Ekstone, but if it's easy to do, I'd love to see it.
  
  @Quicksilver: I see your point and I agree.
  

Huddyj is right, I simple used the ATP ranking model.
And you are right too Tornado (regarding more than six possible small event results in ATP Rankings), but for the TOP30 ATP tennis players are mandatory to attend on the 12 major events, and I just expand this mandatory rules to everybody on the AWP Tour ;)

We (Template Panel) spent many hours to find the best (=the most popular but still varied) 12 templates for the major events.
These are the most important (+varied) templates in WZ, the Tour Ranking is based on these mainly. The 500 Series, and especially the 250 Series events are more about fun than about Tour Ranking (although the best six results from here can mean quite a lot points!)

So if someone wants to conquer the Tour, they need to be good on these carefully selected 12 major templates (=multifarious skills).
And what Quick wrote is also a very important goal.

But I'm open to anything, if lot of you think that this system should be changed, then go for it, let's figure out how ;)

• by Hergul
  If I can think to something else, it may be to rebalance the points earned for each event. Ofc there are maps that should be worth more than others and maps that are just diversions, still Grand Slams and Masters results imo have too a high influence.
  
• by me
  Yes, you are right, but actually that's the goal.
  I mean, the 250 Series events mostly for fun and the race is decided at the twelve major events (though the best of 6 section points still an important part of the ranking)
  
  Btw, I was thinking about the GS 2000 (and the 1200, 720 etc.) points too, because those have really big influence.
  But not really this is the problem, but the single-elimination system, e.g. if we have a best of 3 single-elimination tourney for GS (and Masters) the role of luck would be much lower :/
  
• by Hergul
  mhm, 3 single-elimination tournements seems definitely too demanding. Implementing double elimination would me more than enough and still unsure you need even that.
  
  I get the point of having 12 major events, still GS having double importance compared to Masters sounds unbalanced (even implementing double-elimination).
  
  So I would propose GS to be worth 1500 instead of 2000 and optionally making those double-elimination tournements.
  
  Maybe you can poll the other guys in the thread
  
• by me
  Yes, I plan to open a Tour improvement proposal thread.
  
  Btw, not 3 single-elimination tourneys, but ONE single-elimination tourney just not best of one fight per round, but best of 3 per round, just like the first round on the Tour Finals event (you need two wins to advance to the next round, not only one).
  
  My biggest problem the luck factor now.
  
  If we would able to use seeding and best of 3 formats for the major events, that means likely the good players will fight for the big points all the time. Now if you are the second best player but without seeding if you got the best player in the first round, that easy mean 0 points for you instead of 1200! Plus, on every template there is luck factor, so you can easy lost one game to a weaker player too sometime, but if you should win two games, well in that case we can prevent this too.
  
  So this is my problem now.
  
  On the other hand, in this way more players have the opportunity to test themselves against the best on the Tour Finals (with a simple "lucky" GS win they can qualify now). The best players will qualify for sure.
  So I dunno :)
  
• by Hergul
  I'd prefer being eliminated first round rather than getting the champioship playing 3 times per round :P
  
  Double elimination just adds one game and seems more than enough for the purpose.
  
  Ofc seeding would be optimal
  
• by me
  Hmm, interesting.
  But not 3 times, enough 2 times if you win your matches with 2-0 ;)
  Btw, did you recognize that Tour Finals use best of 3, best of 5, best of 7 and best of 11 formats in the different rounds? :O
  
  And if you lose in the first round in a double elimination format, that will mean more than one additional game for you (this is why I don't like this format when I was active)
  
• by Hergul
  For the finals it is quite worth the effort. 3 games for the first are too a few and should be increased to 5.
  
  During the tour, if you add 2oo3:
  
  1) You do not achieve much as
  - In a match where one has 95% chance, it gives a small benefit
  - In a match where each has 50%, the benefit is zero as whoever comes out is not better than the other.
  - In a match where one has around 75% win rate, the win chances are slightly increased from 75% to 84%. In this regard, consider that having 75% win rate is a rare occurrence, as one has normally either high or small winning chances.
  
  2) Many participants may be demotivated to participate to the tour as they may feel not to have chances. I suspect the tour may become too elitist.
  
  3) Doubling the effort would demotivate even better players. I feel the tour is already demanding and it is difficult to cope with everything during CL and Seasonal.
  
  4) This does not solve the big problem (i.e. if 2 bigs meet first rounds).
  
  On the other hand double elimination:
  - only adds games until you win so it’s worth the effort for any player
  - is quite effective for point 4 above
  
  Still do consider again that even double elimination adds efforts and reduces win chances (hence possibly interest) for players that are not top. I would consider implementing it for GS only or GS and Masters.

I was thinking that maybe everything is fine now and there is no need for any changes? :)

But I'm curious about the opinions of the others.
Thanks in advance for sharing your opinions, thoughts, ideas, suggestions and helping me to improve the Tour!

how do you join awp world tour?

I think the current format works just fine for the most part. However, I feel a few minor adjustments can make it even better. I'm not sure if these changes are worth your effort, but I'm going to put them out there anyway.

My earlier point stands. I think it would be better if additional (beyond 6) 'small' tournaments replaced missed 'big' tournaments. Implementing this could be a bit of a headache though, so it's not a big deal.

I think the current single elimination format is good. Double elimination or 'best of 3' would make things too demanding IMO. But Tour Finals is a different story, best of 3-5-7... is good for that event. I also don't think the point system should be changed. Grand Slams are Grand Slams for a reason, so 2000 points is good.

Perhaps the most obvious difference between AWP and ATP is seeding. I think seeding would be a huge improvement, but I'm not sure if it's possible to implement it here. It may be possible with B's CLOT, if that's the case, it could be used. As you and Hergul said, it would fix many problems including two 'big' players facing in the first round even though they could potentially meet in the final otherwise. I think the downside to seeding is negligible.

Thanks Ekstone!

I actually like hergul's idea of reducing Grand Slams to 1500. I think slightly over 2000 points is enough to qualify for the Finals atm? Feel like one 2k point event does have a bit of a disproportionate impact and 1500 seems like a good number where it'll put a player well within range to qualify for the Finals but won't single-handedly decide it. Also don't really see enough reason for the 2k templates to be weighted so much over the 1k templates.

@goralgn
Write a PM to this account or to the Ekstone account, or write down that you want to join in any AWP forum topic ;)

@tornado
Thank you very much for your well-expressed thoughts!

My earlier point stands. I think it would be better if additional (beyond 6) 'small' tournaments replaced missed 'big' tournaments. Implementing this could be a bit of a headache though, so it's not a big deal.

It is possible to implement, but for this I would have to redesign the whole ranking page. But extra work is one thing.

As I wrote above, I want to highlight the 12 major templates, so if a challenger want to conquer the Tour, she/he won't be able to bypass certain template types (WR or weird templates). So I vote for the current system in order that a wide range of skills to be needed even to win the regular season, and remember, the Tour Finals is based on these 12 major templates too.

Plus if you really hate some major templates, still you can easy qualify yourself to the Tour Finals (which should be the main goal on the Tour (in addition to fun :)) if you play only on the major templates you like plus getting 6 good results from your favorit smaller events.

I think seeding would be a huge improvement, but I'm not sure if it's possible to implement it here. It may be possible with B's CLOT, if that's the case, it could be used.

Yes, but B's CLOT would mean a completely different, more complicated system (e.g. now very easy to invite and join to a single elimination WZ tourney) and very very much works, although in return it would give complete freedom and automation, but the work-to-reward ratio maybe not worth it.

Especially since my main goal is the Tour Finals plus a brand new AWP project, the Tour Regular Season is not a priority for me (just like a qualifier for the Tour Finals)

@FSG
Thanks for your thoughts!

I actually like hergul's idea of reducing Grand Slams to 1500. I think slightly over 2000 points is enough to qualify for the Finals atm? Feel like one 2k point event does have a bit of a disproportionate impact and 1500 seems like a good number where it'll put a player well within range to qualify for the Finals but won't single-handedly decide it. Also don't really see enough reason for the 2k templates to be weighted so much over the 1k templates.

This is a very good explanation, thank you!

Yes, the weight of the GS events are likely too much, so I’m thinking about reducing points from GS events (not only the winner's 2000 points but the 1200, 720, etc. too). The 1500/2000 ratio seems to be ok (so 900 instead of 1200, 540 instead of 720, etc.)

In my opinion, I don't really love the idea of the AWP season being switched over to the CLOT. I mean, the only reason I'm saying this, being the question: Would there still be these amazing spreadsheets to look at??

...work-to-reward maybe not worth it.

Are you able to go a in-depth a bit more with this? How would there be no reward?

Especially since my main goal is the Tour Finals plus a brand new AWP project, the Tour Regular Season is not a priority for me (just like a qualifier for the Tour Finals

This may have been said someplace earlier, but what is the brand new AWP project?

Edited 5/8/2020 12:16:21

I suggest putting in a single post everything related to this project.
This way it is easier to follow the updates and know all the details of your project and events.

For example note that there are 7 different posts about your event ...
I had difficulties understanding some things.

Take my project for example ...
I gathered everything in a single post

https://www.warzone.com/Forum/420301-oficial-project-around-world-tioend

But if you need several pages anyway ...
You can create a blog and reference it here in your main post.

So you can keep everything active and centralized and organized in one place.

This blog system below is excellent and already has the templates ready for you to use

https://www.blogger.com


I'm going to create one of these to put my project together and help organize the information.

Edited 5/6/2020 14:03:51

Yes, the 1500/2000 ratio sounds quite reasonable.

Seeding would be amazing, and I think would be worth the up-front hassle. The only downside I see is that inviting people to the CLOT tournament and then joining is more complicated than simply using a WL tournament, but the lack of seeding is ultimately the biggest issue in creating a fair single elimination format.

If you were willing to switch to use -B's clot, which does support seeding, there are ways to limit the annoyances.

Just a thought for the process:

• Players join AWP on the CLOT
  
• Ekstone schedules an AWP Event on the CLOT. This is the equivalent of creating the tour schedule.
  
• The CLOT invites every individual who has joined AWP to a game announcing an upcoming AWP event. Joining the game is the equivalent of joining that event. This is the equivalent of Ekstone creating a tournament and manually inviting each player. If we want to maintain the schedule of inviting certain people earlier than others, this can be automated as well.
  
• Once the event is full, the CLOT seeds the joined players based on their AWP rating, and creates a seeded single elimination tournament with these players.
  
• Scorekeeping can be either automated or manual, depending on the organizers' preferences.
  

This seems like it would be pretty simple for the organizers, and shouldn't be too hard to code up within -B's CLOT. If you were willing to adopt it, I'm sure the people contributing to the CLOT would be happy to implement it. It significantly reduces the manual work for Ekstone, and I think it is also somewhat simpler for the players, though it will take a little getting used to.

@TIO

I suggest putting in a single post everything related to this project.
This way it is easier to follow the updates and know all the details of your project and events.

For example note that there are 7 different posts about your event ...
I had difficulties understanding some things.

The problem is not the different posts (there are benefits of them), but that there is no well-written FAQ for the Tour :/ This why for you (and for many others) hard to understand how the Tour works (but I should connect the different forum threads better, you are right)

But the Tour is undergoing a transformation (this is the purpose of this topic) and only after this is completed, can we write that cool new FAQ.

And you are right, maybe the WZ forum (home of the trolls and flames...) is not the right place for this type of projects.
But maybe the blog is a wrong direction too, because it looks like the community has chosen Discord instead of the forum, so maybe that is the good direction, I dunno.

As Someone Who Follows Forums More Than Discord I Like Seeing Diffrent posts

@Beren, @Viking1007
Let's see the work-to-reward ratio regarding switching to -B's CLOT (PROS and CONS)

• PROS:
  
  • Can be infinite advantages (but only with infinite work!)
    I mean, if we put many work into it, we can reach anything...
    Full automation, opt-in system (instead of invitations), seeding, boX formats, anything.
• CONS:
  
  • "inviting people to the CLOT tournament and then joining is more complicated than simply using a WL tournament"
    This is a main point imo. I try to describe it (I hate that English is not my native language :| )
    So what is the Tour for the community?
    
    • A part of them fully understand and love this system and are also active on the Tour (if not retired :( )
      
    • A part of them understand the system, but don't like it (too demanding, bad system, etc.), but occasionally join some tourneys only for fun.
      
    • A part of them does not or does not fully understand (or not interested) the system, but like to play on single elimination WZ tourneys, so are active on the Tour.
    If we switch to -B CLOT, which of the above groups will come with us? :)
    I think that the second and the third (largest) groups are unlikely :|
    And even not everyone from the first (smallest) group would come!
  • A lot of necessary work, even if we only want to use the seeding.
    The seeded tourneys are already exists in -B's CLOT, but switching the Tour to the CLOT would still mean a lot of work, because I have many automation (Deadman's and Krzystof's scripts and many google sheets functions) based on the current system, which should be changed. Plus the new invitation system, etc.
    
  • The ATP ranking system (which is used by AWP too) is far from perfect.
    I mean, even with seeding (best of X format, etc.) the ranking system won't be perfect. Will be better but still not enough good.

So for me clearly CONS > PROS
This is why I didn't want to switch the Tour to -B's CLOT
Although I want to "switch" the Tour Finals! That is an other story.

So my plan, focusing on Tour Finals mainly, and the yearly 50 single elimination tourneys will be the regular season (qualification) for Tour Finals. So the regular seasons would be more about fun (with a fun rolling ranking and race) and the real fights would start on the Tour Finals :)

So I only want to make such changes to regular season which help with better qualification system for Tour Finals, and possible simplifications and automations (easier admin work).

So this is my approach.
But if many of you will write here different opinions (or not many but with good justifications), well I am open to change my mind ;)

So for me clearly CONS > PROS
This is why I didn't want to switch the Tour to -B's CLOT
Although I want to "switch" the Tour Finals! That is an other story.

So my plan, focusing on Tour Finals mainly, and the yearly 50 single elimination tourneys will be the regular season (qualification) for Tour Finals. So the regular seasons would be more about fun (with a fun rolling ranking and race) and the real fights would start on the Tour Finals :)

So I only want to make such changes to regular season which help with better qualification system for Tour Finals, and possible simplifications and automations (easier admin work).

This is why I didn't want to switch the Tour to -B's CLOT

So, do you personally think that in the next year or so the Tour will be switched to the CLOT or no?

So the regular seasons would be more about fun (with a rolling ranking and race) and the real fights would start on the Tour Finals :)

The process for qualifying for the Tour Finals is still going to be the same, correct? Like top 16 in the regular season gets to qualify for Tour Finals, correct?

Edited 5/8/2020 13:06:01

I think the biggest PRO in favor of moving to the CLOT is to reduce the manual work you have to do, but if you don't feel that is a big concern then I will let you decide how to use your time!

@Beren
I put the full automation first in the list of PROS, but full automation is not a realistic goal.
I mean, the CL became full automated with -B's CLOT?
Of course everything can be automated, but there are some things not worth it (it would be too much work)

And as I wrote earlier, I already use scripts for automation.
For example, creating a Tour event mean:
On Mondays:
- Create the WZ single elimination tourney (with a few clicks)
- Copy a line to my browser (Kzysztof's script) which auto invite the TOP50/100 + wild card players
On Wednesdays
- Copy a line to my browser (Kzysztof's script) which auto invite everybody from my friend list.
Monthly
- Creating the monthly TOP50/100 + wild card player list by running an other Kzysztof's script

As you can see these means only a few mins per week for me.
If I count handling subscriptions, unsubscriptions and wild cards, still no more than 5 minutes a week.
The rest (+5 mins per week) are the forum posts/updates, which difficult to automate.

The monthly updates is an other thing (still not too much because I use Deadman's (although unfinished :( ) script, so 6-14 mins per finished event if no new players) but many of its steps (e.g. monthly event table update) would be difficult to automate.
Not to mention template management and other time consuming things, which would be very difficult to automate.

So reducing the manual work is a very attractive thing, but as you can see, I could not save much time, and only with a lot of extra work and losing most of the Tour players, so seems definitely CONS > PROS (I can save easier and more with simplifications (remove the unnecessary tasks) and further automation (e.g. finishing Deadman's script :) more google sheets functions, etc.)

Plus, as I wrote above, I want to focus on the Tour Finals not the regular seasons.
And if -B is open for it, I want to migrate the Tour Finals to his CLOT (in that case definitely PROS > CONS because currently everything is manually, and especially because my next project will use that format too!)

@Viking
The regular season of the Tour (the 50 single elimination WZ tourneys) won't be switched to -B's CLOT, but I would like switching the Tour Finals!
And the process for qualifying for the Tour Finals won't be change, except that the GS points will be reduced with 1500/2000 ratio.

Edited 5/10/2020 04:51:42