What if the top 8 or top 16 cuts were based on the highest ranking players in each faction rather than highest rank overall after swiss?
How it would work:
At the end of swiss, the highest ranking player for each faction (mini factions being one faction) advances to the cut. In a top 16, you just take the top two for each. My first thought is that it could encourage diversity at large tournaments. To make the cut, I don’t have to be the best player, just the best Adam or Weyland player.
It would get complicated if one player was top in both their runner and corp faction. For example: I go undefeated as Anarch and NBN. In that case, I get to choose which faction gets me into the cut. I choose Anarch and then the next highest NBN player gets into the cut.
The cut pairings would be the top player’s top faction vs. the lowest ranked player of the opposite side, similar to a 1st seed vs 8th seed. That way, each player plays their best faction in the first round.
Would this solve some meta staleness problems? Would it make tournaments more interesting and accessible to mid tier players?
I came up with this idea like 10 minutes ago. Curious what people think.
Could be interesting. My L5R history might be showing when I say this, but I wouldn’t mind it if there was a “top of faction” prize for some events. If you lump the mini-factions together, that would make a nice even 8 prizes to award. If a player would get two faction prizes, maybe have one of them drop down to the second-place person in one of them.
Would mean you’ve got a chance of getting at least something if you’re a cool kid and not on the Anarch/NBN bandwagon.
I really like the idea of trying to use clever incentives to encourage players to explore different deck options, but I’m not sure that manipulating the top cut of a tournament would be the way to go about it. I worry that you could have a player who came in 3rd in swiss on Anarch/NBN (or whatever the hotness currently is) who would then miss the cut to someone who was say 17th in Swiss who happened to bring Apex/Weyland. Not only does it seem unfair that the 3rd place player doesn’t get to play in the Elimination rounds at all, but one could easily assume that the 17th place player will probably just get curb stomped in the elimination rounds by superior players, or at the very least, players playing more “serious” decks.
I’ve been in the situation of missing a cut on SoS even when tied on prestige (to players who had ID’ed, no less), and that is frustrating enough. I think anything else that skews the results further would generally be viewed negatively by the community.
On the other hand, the idea of giving out specific prize support to highest finishers in each faction is better in my opinion because it encourages diversity to an extent without ruining the competitive spirit of the game. FFG already does this for their World Championships, so I see no reason why they couldn’t do it at the regional level as well. I’m not sure if they actually had specific prizes, but I do remember them announcing the highest placed finishers for each faction along with announcing the top 16 players.
Messing with the cut is not the answer - if someone wasn’t going to make the cut until some weird rule was applied, then they’re unlikely to win the tournament. Best of faction prizes are cool though.
The interesting thing with “best of faction” prizes in netrunner is that everyone plays two of the factions, so “best of faction” prizes are pretty clumped up for folks that made the cut anyways. Could restrict it to “best of faction not in the cut” but then that also seems like not so much best in faction anymore
