We have finalized the details for the global competition. This post will discuss entry, tournament structure, eligibility, and rewards.
Entry
On December 31st at 11:59PM ET we will prevent further algos from entering the ‘season one’ environment, giving Elo scores time to stabilize on the leaderboard. You will still be able to see your own algo’s Elo and match history.
On January 4th at 4:00 PM ET we will take a ‘snapshot’ of the leaderboard, the top ten players at this point will be entered into the global competition finals.
Prizes and Competition Structure.
There are 5 ways to win.
All players who enter get $200 for a total of $2k.
All players who enter get (11 - rank)*$50 for a total of $2.75k. Refer to the table below for a detailed breakdown:
$50 $100 $150 $200 $250 $300 $350 $400 $450 $500
Round Robin Groups
Players will be broken up into two groups:
5 players with odd rankings and 5 players with even rankings.
All players will play against all other players in their group.
Each win awards $200 for a total of $4k
Grand finale
The player with the most wins in their group moves to the grand finale.
In the case of a tie, the player with the higher rank moves on.
If they have the same Elo, the player who won their round robin match.
The grand finale winner will earn an additional $1k
The final $250 is reserved for special bonus prizes and raffles, to be given out during the stream to viewers or players at C1’s discretion.
Stream
We will be streaming the games Sunday, January 6. We currently expect to start around 5pm ET and run until around 8pm ET. As always, you can view the stream on our twitch channel.
Eligibility and Conflicts
Conflicts and issues will be resolved at C1’s discretion.
Edit
Users will be able to see the leaderboard during the stabilization period. We decided while this may be less exciting it would make for a more transparent process.
The brief answer: It’s going to be pretty close to what we are seeing now.
The easiest option we are considering is to disable the leaderboard and algo uploads, which takes a trivial amount of effort and would cause slightly more matches to be played, as there would be no more first matches.
We are currently testing and investigating creating two separate pools of algos and allowing uploads to continue without interuption, but to flag new algos as ‘season 2’ algos and seperate them to a seperate leaderboard and matchmaking pool. If this option looks promising, we will use it, which will result in fewer matches being played overall, 1/3rd as many as a worst-case estimate.
We are still testing this feature and are undecided on whether or not we are going to implement this to avoid the 7 day downtime but it looks like a reasonable option. Even in the worst case, we believe 7 days will be enough time for algos to stabilize.
@Isaac
Good catch, I personally hadn’t thought about this but the engi in charge of this feature might have plans for it. Ill bring it up to them and make sure they are aware.
No, the leaderboard will not be reset. We are just going to give it time to settle.
As a side note, we are expecting a large number of new players joining us very soon after we announced the waterloo competition, our largest live competition yet. To reduce the downtime of the site for these new players, the following times have been adjusted:
The leaderboard will be cutoff Friday January 4th at 4pm ET
The stream will take place Sunday January 6th at 5pm ET
Will 4 days be enough settling time? I uploaded an algo roughly 4 days ago (± 6 hours) and it has only played 74 games. For any people putting the finishing touches on, who upload a fresh algo in the next few hours, the situation could be similar.
Then again, unless you have any other plans, I am anticipating the matchmaking frequency in the next 4 days to be noticeably better than the past week, since new submits are disabled and the entire server won’t be busy with peoples’ first 15 boost matches. Will this be the case? If so, 4 days seems like enough.
We expect that 4 days will be enough, but will be keeping our eye on it and making sure everything seems to be good. A pretty significant portion of matches is going to first matches, which are all complete at the time of writing this, and with no new algos entering the system we expect it will stabalize reasonably quickly. If there is significant issue or cause for concern, we may consider extending the deadline as we always try to be flexible and do what we think is best in situations like that, but I think it is unlikely that we will have a need for this.
Could we actually make it at least 5 days? I removed and replaced almost all my algos on the 31st, thinking we would have 7 days, and there all still rising. I wouldnt complain but the match making isn’t really speeding up either and so its probably now even possible for me to be in the top 10 because of this. I’m pretty sure my newest algos have high potential though.
Wouldn’t it be better to wait for it has settled? E.g. until the evening of the 5th?
As it is now, it is not obvious which algos will make it to top 10. Even the top ones have fallen and other versions of the same player have come up (e.g. SIXTH ITEM for Ryan D has taken over his long term stander RIP GA).
